


Outlaws

by beeftony



Series: Outlaws Series [2]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2017-12-06 13:22:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeftony/pseuds/beeftony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After St. Hadrian's, Leviathan retaliates against Stephanie Brown, and she's forced to ally herself with the black sheep of the Bat Family. Sequel to Batgirls Like Bad Boys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Exodus Part One

Jason Todd did not normally eat breakfast. Sure, all the health magazines that he occasionally browsed in the checkout line insisted that breakfast was a great way to "jumpstart your metabolism" and lose weight, but the truth was that skipping the so-called most important meal of the day had always given him more energy. The only times he had regularly eaten breakfast were at Alfred's insistence, since one did not simply turn down freshly made scones from Alfred Pennyworth. Ever since coming back to life, however, he had reverted back to his old habits.

The reason for that was because he was usually out so late that by the time he woke up the time for breakfast had long since passed. At the same time, maintaining his figure took a lot of fuel, so he tended to devour large lunches and dinners to make up for skipping the first meal, with plenty of snacks in between. It was not the perfect diet, but it worked for him.

However, last night had been relatively quiet, so he had turned in early and woke up at eight in the morning with nothing to do but eat. So he had fixed himself some bacon and eggs and was currently chowing down.

He was about halfway finished with his plate when a knock at the door interrupted him mid-chew. Taking a swig of orange juice, he worked a hand through the tangled mix of helmet hair and bed head that rested atop his scalp, then rose and strolled over to the door, pulling a tee-shirt over his bare torso at the same time. The shirt still smelled like the last person to wear it, which brought a smile to his face.

A smile that transmuted into an expression of bewilderment when he saw said person at his doorstep, dressed in her pajamas.

Jason rubbed his eyes. "Am I dreaming?"

The blonde shook her head. "Hi Jason," she greeted. "It's great to see you again. Now run for your life!"

He quirked an eyebrow. "Did Alfred make you watch _Doctor Who_?"

"No, I mean RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!" She pointed at the window behind him. He followed her finger, and saw what she meant.

On the opposite rooftop was what appeared to be a teenage girl, wearing the same outfit as the one in front of him. Oh, and she was holding a rocket launcher.

Jason did not hesitate to follow the blonde as she dashed down the hallway. The RPG crashed through the window and directly into his breakfast, scattering eggs everywhere and setting the apartment on fire. He sighed. At least that safe house had not required a deposit.

"What the hell was _that_?" he demanded as they raced down the stairwell.

"Oh, didn't I mention? We've got assassins after us!"

" _Us_?"

"Okay, mostly me, but I came to you for a very specific reason!" she explained. "And I brought some friends!"

Jason boggled for a moment. He had not expected his second date with Stephanie Brown to go like this.

"And where are _they_?" He brought up his foot and kicked open the door that led outside. It stung a little worse with bare feet than it did when he had his boots on. His boots that were now burning in the apartment, along with the rest of his costume.

"The Compact!" She pointed to a purple SUV about fifty yards away. They started running in that direction, but were interrupted by the appearance of a dozen wild schoolgirls.

"Okay, now I'm _definitely_ dreaming," he remarked. "That's the last time I watch low budget kung fu movies before bed."

"I highly doubt there are kung fu movies about ninja schoolgirls."

"I swear it wasn't porn!" He held up his hands. "And you're missing out. Low budget movies always have the best action sequences."

"I'm sure," she said in perfect deadpan.

His reply was cut off by the fact that the schoolgirls all decided to jump them at once. Jason hopped backwards, barely avoiding simultaneous swipes from three katana blades. Stephanie had pulled out a telescoping staff and was fending off six of the attackers at once, which left him with the other half.

"You girls are _so_ lucky I don't have my guns." One of them attempted a flying leap, which he countered by punching her in the gut. The sword fell out of her hands and into his, and he used it to fend off another swipe, batting it to the side rather than try to block.

Steph took a break from punching one of the girls repeatedly in the face to raise an eyebrow at him. "Was that a _Shoryuken_?"

"I used to hang out at the arcade before my parents died," he explained while he dipped back to avoid a swing from a _kusarigama_ , a nasty little weapon that was basically a pair of _nunchaku_ with a longer chain and a sickle on one end. "Sue me."

"Copyright lawyers are the least of our problems right now."

He muttered something under his breath as the chain wrapped around his stolen weapon. He yanked back on it, pulling its wielder close enough for him to lash out with a devastating kick. He removed the chain from it and stared down at the sword.

Jason did not understand the rest of the world's fascination with the katana. Japan was a notoriously iron-poor country, and katana were typically constructed using a folding technique to rid the metal of imperfections. All but the most meticulously constructed blades were horribly brittle and prone to snapping in two.

In other words, not his favorite weapon.

Their attackers also did not seem to know how to use the sword. Katana were intended for slicing and stabbing, but they were coming after him with hacking and slashing motions, putting their blades at great risk. They appeared to have been trained by someone who thought the sword looked cool but did not understand its strengths and weaknesses.

Fortunately for him and unfortunately for them, Jason had briefly studied Bushido on his quest to learn from the world's deadliest killers. He had actually sought out the teacher himself rather than having Talia recruit him, and he was the only one he had not killed. It had only really come in handy when he fought Green Arrow, and even then he had the good sense to put explosives in the hilt.

"You're all just a bunch of rookies, aren't you?" he taunted, dipping to the side to avoid the next attack. "Amateurs thinking they can cut it in the big leagues. You call this an ambush?"

Deflecting another swipe, he swung his blade in a downward arc and carved into the nearest schoolgirl's clavicle, twisting the blade slightly as it made contact and pulling it towards him to get the full effect. Blood started to pour from her neck, and he took the opportunity to kick her in the stomach, launching her into another one of the attackers and sending them both to the ground.

Three down.

"Don't you ladies know who I am?" he continued, chatting it up as they tried to eviscerate him. He preferred to talk while he fought, since it kept the enemy off balance. "If you did, you'd know you just made a _big_ mistake."

"We are dead!" one of the schoolgirls shouted out cryptically, and he vaulted over her to avoid a savage charge.

"Goddamn right you are."

Steph's attackers had managed to corral her towards him by this point, trying to pen them in together so that they could surround and overtake them. Even though their training had happened years apart and under much different circumstances, all it took was a nod and two smiles for them to work together.

As if they had choreographed it weeks in advance, Jason ducked down and let Steph spin her polearm through the air in a full circle, forcing the others to give them some breathing room.

"So," she began as the schoolgirls quickly regrouped and started closing in from all sides. "Does this qualify as a normal Sunday for you, too?"

"Can't remember the last time I lived through Attack of the Killer Schoolgirls, but the part where they're trying to kill me is familiar enough."

"Just checking."

Two of the schoolgirls charged in his direction, and he allowed Steph to grab his shoulders and vault over him, kicking both of them in the face. They stayed down, which meant that only seven remained. Once she was on the opposite side, he spun around and sliced the shaft of a spear in two, then used the momentum to leap into the air and land a tornado kick to the schoolgirl's temple, sending her to the ground.

Six.

"How do you..." He trailed off as the first European weapon he had seen, a chain flail with dangerous looking spikes, passed dangerously close to his face. "...know these girls again?"

"I'll explain when they're..." She switched places with him and allowed the chain to become tangled on her staff, then yanked it away. "...when they're not trying to give us the Death of a Thousand Cuts, thank you very much."

"And here I thought this was gonna be a dull weekend."

Another of the teenage ninjas ran at him and he sidestepped while spinning, slicing her back open as she passed. She stayed down, screeching in pain. Whoever trained these girls had obviously not prepared them for an enemy who was willing to inflict serious injury. They probably relied on their innocent appearance and the social stigma against hurting girls to make their opponents hesitate, neither of which affected Jason Todd. People who tried to kill him died, no matter how pretty they looked.

Five.

"You want me to keep going? Come and get it!"

Behind him, Stephanie was facing off with two more attackers, whom she dropped by tossing the staff into their faces, which broke their noses with a sickening crunch, then swinging wide and knocking one into the other, cracking their skulls together and sending them both to the ground.

Three.

The next challenger made the cardinal mistake of swinging the sword like a baseball bat, which he easily countered by performing a back handspring and knocking the blade into the air with his feet. He then demonstrated the proper technique and slashed her diagonally across the belly before dropping her with a reverse roundhouse kick to the head. The blade descended from the sky and pierced her shoulder, pinning her to the ground and causing blood to pool beneath her.

Two.

They were down to one each, and Stephanie showed no signs of slowing down any time soon. Even though he had not been around to see it, he knew that she had commonly regarded as the weak link of the Bat Family when he was still nothing more than a bad memory. Somehow she had gotten phenomenally good when none of them were paying attention.

She smacked the lower end of her staff into a girl's stomach, causing her to bend over right into Steph's rising knee. The teenage ninja then caught a boot in the solar plexus, slamming her into the unforgiving wall of the alley.

The final schoolgirl charged at him with her sword overhead, which left her completely unprepared for when he plunged the blade in her stomach and ran it up to the hilt.

The look of shock on her face as blood started to leak out of the corners of her mouth only produced a tiny bit of guilt in Jason, and even then because he could not help thinking what a waste it was that a beautiful teenage girl had been turned into this. He buried the feeling as he turned around and twisted the sword before yanking it out of her belly.

He turned around expecting to see Stephanie gawking at his brutality and prepared himself for a lecture. It never came. Instead she simply motioned toward The Compact. "Come on!"

He blinked. Any of the other members of the family would have torn him a new one over using lethal force, especially against teenage girls, but Steph seemed to realize that they did not have time to argue over it. He was liking her more by the minute.

They arrived at The Compact without any further incident, and Stephanie hopped in the driver's seat while he rode shotgun.

"Okay," said Jason as they pulled out onto the street. "Not that I don't appreciate the surprise party, but does somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on?"

* * *

**Outlaws  
** Exodus, Part I

* * *

"First, some introductions." Stephanie gestured to the two girls in the back seat. One of them was white with short hair and was glaring at him. The other, currently unconscious passenger was dark-skinned—he did not want to presume her race until she was awake, though he spotted more than a few Indian features—and clad in the same schoolgirl outfit as the rest of the assassins. "This is Wendy Harris, also known as Proxy, and that's Jolisa Windsor."

"Pleasure," he muttered. "Why's she asleep?"

"Sedated, actually. We haven't figured out how to counteract the mind control wafer she swallowed just yet."

"Mind control...?" he repeated, becoming increasingly baffled with each passing second. "Explain. Now."

"I'll start at the beginning." She took a sharp right into an alleyway, cutting across to another street. "A couple months ago, Batman sent me to infiltrate St. Hadrian's Finishing School for Girls. On paper, it's a pretty prestigious school that only the richest girls can get into, and it's supposed to help them realize their personal and professional goals."

Jason scoffed. "And let me guess; it's actually a secret ninja academy."

"Got it in one." She turned left coming out of the alley, startling a homeless person. "They train teenage beauty queens how to kill and then hire them out to clients who need a bodyguard that doesn't exactly _look_ like one. Right before I was sent in to break up their little operation, they got a contract from somebody called Leviathan."

"Who the hell is Leviathan?"

"Great question." She pushed down harder on the accelerator. "And one that Batman just found the answer to. It turns out Leviathan is actually somebody we're all familiar with, _especially_ you."

"Which explains why you roped me into all this." He glanced at the mirror to make sure nobody was following them. "Who is he?"

"She, actually." She turned right at the next intersection. "Talia Al Ghul."

A shiver ran down his spine. "...Shit."

"Yeah, she wants her little hell spawn back," Stephanie continued. "It's like _Kramer vs. Kramer_ except both sides have thermonuclear capability."

"And why are those psycho ninja girls after you again?"

"Mind-controlled. Not psycho. And it turns out 'Leviathan' wasn't too happy with her troop supply getting cut off. They came after us this morning."

"And you came to me for help instead of Batman _why_?"

"Batman's still out in the middle of the ocean." She blew through the intersection just as the light turned from yellow to red. "I wouldn't have known the situation at all if Proxy hadn't been keeping up with Oracle."

It was then that Jason realized none of the intersections they had passed through were equipped with traffic cameras. She seemed to be specifically avoiding any routes that would allow them to be electronically tracked.

"Firewall is... gone." She closed her eyes for just a moment. "And so is all my gear. No batsuit, no gooperangs... nothing that made me Batgirl is left, except this car. We don't have any hiding spots left in Gotham, and I figured you might have some place that we could lie low for a while."

"Not anymore I don't. That was my last safe house, and Batman and Robin shut down my secret arsenal a while ago." He smiled faintly. "But hey, if you're serious about hiding, then we need to go to Switzerland."

Steph quirked an eyebrow. "Why's that?"

"Because it's where all my money's kept, and if I do a wire transfer from anywhere else in the world Talia and whoever else is interested will be able to track us. But if we go there and withdraw the money in person, then we can go anywhere we want afterward and no one will be able to follow us."

"I always wanted to see the Alps." The light in front of them turned red, and she stopped. "How do we get there?"

"Airport. I have a plane there all chartered and ready to go at a half hour's notice in case I ever need to leave the country in a hurry."

"Thoughtful." She punched some numbers into the GPS, and it plotted a camera-free route to the airport. "A little paranoid, but thoughtful."

"Is this thing wheelchair accessible?" Wendy inquired from the backseat.

"It uses stairs, so no. I can carry you if you want."

She looked at Stephanie. "Why are we getting help from this guy again?"

"Because, with the exception of the whole 'no-killing' rule, he's the closest thing to Batman we've got right now," she explained. "And it appears the whole 'planning and preparation' rule stuck with him just as well as it did with me."

He scowled a bit at the comparison, but could not deny that it was true. He had never taken crazy-preparedness to the level that Bruce did, but he always liked to have an exit strategy. He had an extra costume on that plane, as well as weapons. If they could get out of the country in it, they stood a chance of surviving.

Of course, he had thought that often enough to know that something was bound to go wrong.

* * *

They arrived at the airport about thirty minutes later, without encountering a single ambush. Jason had been through enough in his life to feel uneasy about that. He also knew enough not to say that out loud.

"It's quiet. _Too_ quiet."

Stephanie Brown, apparently, did not.

"Great, now you've doomed us all."

"Hey, I know our luck hasn't been great this morning, but really, what else could they throw at us?" The gate to Jason's private airstrip opened in front of them. The plane was about a hundred yards away, ready to lift off as soon as they got aboard.

Jason rolled his eyes. "You're not even tempting fate anymore. You're flipping it off while smoking and wearing shades."

"Could you for _once_ just look on the bright side?" Then, most likely to spite him, she uttered the most dreaded words in their jinx-ridden profession: "It's not like things could get any worse, right?"

As if she had violated some sort of cosmic three-strikes rule, the plane chose that moment to explode.

"Holy flying sneakers, Batman!" Steph exclaimed as she swerved out of the way of the flaming debris. The Compact skidded to a stop some seventy yards away from what used to be their ride out of Gotham.

"You just _had_ to say it!" Wendy shouted from the back seat.

"Hey, that thing would have exploded whether I said anything or not!" She turned around and jabbed finger in her direction. "If anything I tricked out the laws of irony and made it blow up ahead of schedule!"

"It's still gone." Jason scowled at the burning wreckage. "And it means they knew where we were headed. That's why they didn't attack us on the way."

"Okay, so what now?" Stephanie turned to face him. "We buy a plane ticket?"

"I kinda left my passport in my other pants." He gestured down to his pajamas. "And I seriously doubt they're gonna let us bring an unconscious girl on the plane."

"We could just say she's sleeping," Wendy suggested.

"Still doesn't solve problem number one. And I doubt you ladies carry those with you either."

They shrugged.

"Besides, they'll be expecting us to do that. Which means we need to do something they _don't_ expect."

"And that is?" Steph inquired.

"We need to hijack a plane."

They both stared dumbfounded at him for a full minute.

"What?"

"You want us to hijack a _plane_?" Stephanie repeated.

Jason nodded.

"Yeah, real funny," remarked Wendy.

"I'm not joking." His features turned deadly serious. "This is real. Killers are after you and they've already burned everything that gave you a life here. You're gonna have to leave it all behind. What's stopping you from doing that?"

"Oh, I don't know, how about the fact that we'll be branded as _international terrorists_!"

"I already am," he replied matter-of-factly. "You ladies don't have to come."

Steph and Wendy exchanged a meaningful look.

"And relax, I don't mean a 747. We're jacking a cargo plane." At their confused expressions, he elaborated: "No passengers, lots of fuel, and if we pick one that's big enough you can probably fit this thing in the bay."

Stephanie stared at the steering wheel for several moments. In that time, he watched her normally soft and friendly countenance shift into something dark and determined. She was forcing herself into a state of mind that would allow her to put aside her normal reaction to a situation and do what she needed to survive. He recognized that look because he had undergone the same transition a long time ago.

Hopefully it would not be permanent.

"I need to do something first," she informed them with a slight choke in her voice, grabbing her phone and stepping outside the vehicle.

Jason could not hear her as she made the call, and she had her back to him so he could not read her lips. As soon as she was finished, she disassembled the phone and stamped on the remains. When she got back into the car, her eyes were red as if she had been crying, but the tears no longer fell.

"You okay?" She nodded.

"Yeah," she replied numbly. "Let's do this. I trust you have a plan?"

"The plan is always the first casualty. What separates us from the rest is our ability to adapt under pressure." He smirked. "That said, here's what we need to do."

But even as he began to detail exactly how things were about to go down, he could not shake the feeling that part of Stephanie Brown had died that morning. And he did not know for certain if it would ever come back.

* * *

Clyde Johnson had always hated his name. It was not embarrassing by any means; it was a perfectly normal, all-American name. But that was what bothered him about it. It held no intrigue or mystery. It bored him half to sleep every time he said it. He wanted to change it legally to something more impressive-sounding, but the airline had strongly advised him against doing so, because apparently the paperwork involved in changing a pilot's identity was a bureaucratic clusterfuck.

Maybe it was for the best, though. He certainly did not have much of an imagination.

His boring name had been the reason he became a pilot, like his father. Of course, his father had been a pilot in the 60s and 70s, back when wearing that uniform would get you laid six ways from Sunday and an open tab at any bar in the country. Now nobody gave a two shits about airline pilots, especially after 9/11. They cared even less about the pilots of cargo planes, even though they kept the country supplied with everything from coffee beans to tiny plastic toys made in Chinese sweat shops.

And that was the reason he became a smuggler.

Being a pilot did not pay as well as it once did, and running things under the radar had turned out to be a pretty profitable side business. Right now he was set to fly out to Europe to pick up a shipment of automatic weapons for a client here in Gotham. He was an old client, one who had recently returned and still retained his old connections. Clyde had met him exactly once, and it had left a considerable impression on him.

After running through the pre-flight checklist, he confirmed everything with his co-pilot and contacted air traffic control to confirm that they were cleared for launch. When he received the affirmative, he taxied onto the runway and put his hand on the throttle.

"I wouldn't do that just yet."

"What in the...?" He looked behind him to see some idiot in pajamas standing at the rear of the cockpit. "How the hell did you get in here?"

"What's the matter, Clydie?" the stranger continued. "Don't you _recognize_ me?"

His eyes went wide the moment he placed the voice. "B-boss! Sorry, but without the helmet I didn't..."

He shrugged. "S'okay. Here's what you're gonna do, though. You're gonna keep us on the ground while I open up the bay door. Nothing's in the bay, so you don't have to worry about losing any cargo."

"Pardon me for asking, Boss, but why—"

"Expecting company. Hit the throttle when I give the order, and not a second earlier, you got it?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Good man." He disappeared into the cargo bay and released the lever that opened the door. From what Clyde could see, there was a purple SUV trailing behind them at high speed. Curiously, airport security was not hot on their heels.

"Not that I'm doubting you, Boss, but what makes you think they won't shoot us out of the sky for pulling a stunt like this?"

"Because anyone who would either notice or care is too busy dealing with an explosion at the other end of the tarmac," he answered. "Just keep her steady."

"Will do."

" _Flight 247, be advised, all planes are to remain grounded for the time being. Slow down and taxi back to the hangar_."

Clyde weighed his options. On the one hand, violating a grounding order might result in fighters being scrambled, especially if they noticed him taking additional passengers on board. On the other hand, the man who had invited said passengers would most assuredly kill him if he didn't do exactly as ordered.

"I'm almost out of runway here, control," he radioed back, while his copilot wisely remained silent. "No choice but to finish takeoff."

" _Negative, Flight 247, stop at once and proceed back to the hangar_."

"Sorry control," he replied. "You didn't say the magic word." He shut off the radio.

The SUV rocketed into the cargo bay, stopping at just the right moment. The man closed the ramp and turned back to him. "Throttle, now!"

He complied, bringing the plane up to speed and pulling back on the stick, sending them up, up and away.

* * *

"Goddamn it, Stephanie, where _are_ you?"

Oracle was, to put it mildly, worried. More accurately, she was on the verge of panicking. It was bad enough that the rest of the Bats were still on the other side of the world, having barely survived the opening salvos in what was sure to be a long and bloody war, but Firewall had gone offline two hours ago and now she could not raise Batgirl.

There was a time when such an occurrence would not have triggered as much alarm. But she had grown... closer to Stephanie in the past year, and the fact that she seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet at almost the same moment that Talia Al Ghul had revealed herself as the mysterious Leviathan could not be a coincidence. Especially when she had just shut down the school that they were using to train their teenage death commandos less than two weeks ago.

She had been searching for the blonde like a woman obsessed for the last two hours, using satellites, radar, sonar, tracking beacons, and even traffic cameras to try and discover a trace of her. But Stephanie was nowhere to be found. If she had taken The Compact, it was not displaying on any of her tracking equipment, which meant the onboard navigational system must have been deactivated—though she would have had to physically remove it for that to happen. It was also designed not to show up on any known form of camera surveillance in case anybody else tried to track it, so that was a dead end as well. Or she could have just taken a regular car and left it behind. Or she might not have gotten out at all...

Barbara had been so immersed in all her advanced means of locating people that she forgot simpler methods existed. She did not even hear her cell phone ringing until after it had gone to voicemail.

" _Hi, O_ ," Stephanie's voice greeted her when she played the message. " _I_ _don't have much time. I just wanted to let you know what's going on_."

Oracle stopped typing. She stopped looking at her screens. She stopped doing everything and listened to the emotion in the teenager's voice.

" _As you've probably figured out, Firewall is offline. The remnants of St. Hadrian's blew it up this morning. Don't ask me how they found us, 'cause I don't know._ " She laughed bitterly. " _I guess they must've followed me back_."

Oracle felt her eyes burning. " _Wendy's safe. She's here with me, and so is Jolisa. We're getting help from... somebody. I can't tell you who right now. I just hope you'll believe me when I say I trust them._ "

There was a long pause. " _I know that you've always believed in me. And I am so,_ so _grateful that you let me carry on your legacy_." Her voice choked. " _But it's time for me to leave Batgirl—and Gotham—behind. I'm not safe here anymore. None of us are._ "

She heard Stephanie sniffle, then choke back a sob. By now, she was doing the same thing. " _I won't bother telling you not to find me. We both know you'll just try that much harder. But if you do, just do me a favor and... don't tell the rest of the fam where I'm at. Tell Tim I'm not dead this time, tell Dick he makes a great Batman, tell Damian I'm going to miss seeing him grow up, tell Cass she can have her old name back, and tell Alfred he's a better hero than any of us._ " Another pause. " _And tell Bruce... I'm sorry._ "

Oracle could not stop the tears that started trickling down her face. "Damn it, you stupid girl..."

" _Goodbye, O,_ " Stephanie concluded, and from the sound of her voice she was on the verge of bawling as well. " _And thank you... for everything_."

The message ended.

Barbara sat there for a full ten seconds before exploding into motion, trying to trace the signal back to Stephanie's location. But it was long dead. She tried to track the phone's GPS, but it was offline. She must have destroyed it after making the call. That much was established when she tried to call her back.

She debated whether or not to apprise the others of the situation. They had enough to deal with right now, and Steph's life was not in immediate danger. She was just doing something incredibly boneheaded.

"That does it," she decided, letting anger override the agony she felt at losing contact with Stephanie yet again. "I'm telling her mother."


	2. Exodus Part 2

"What do we got?"

"Homicide. Single stab wound. Victim's in her teens."

Detective Nick Gage sighed and downed a sip of his coffee as he shuffled from his car towards the crime scene. An officer lifted up the caution tape and he ducked slightly to get under it. "This seemed like such a nice neighborhood, too." He put his hands on his hips and sighed. "We know whose house this is yet?"

"Working on it, Detective," Officer Jackson replied. "Computer's running a bit slow."

"Let me know when you've got it." He stepped across the threshold of the suburban house and straight into the crime scene.

The entrance was small, with a staircase to the left and a hallway that led to a decently sized kitchen. There were two unfinished plates of waffles on the table, along with orange juice. Somebody had been home when this happened. The doorframe behind him had splintered when somebody kicked open the door. That meant they were dealing with a home invasion.

The victim was lying dead center in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by the forensics team. He ventured closer.

"Cause of death?"

"She was stabbed," Dr. Maria Valencias answered with her trademark bluntness, raising an eyebrow as if to ask whether or not he was kidding.

Maria was relatively new to the department; newer than him, even. She was a medical examiner who, unlike the old standby Ghoul, was not afraid to actually go out to crime scenes instead of waiting for the bodies to show up at the morgue. Of course, she spent plenty of time down there, too.

"So I see." Ordinarily he would have come back with a lame remark, but this close to the corpse he did not feel like joking. Several facts presented themselves as he looked over the body, and he filed them away for further analysis.

The victim was a white female, no older than nineteen. She was dressed in a school uniform, complete with a vest, skirt and stockings. Her long brown hair had been done up in a ponytail, and she had just enough make-up to appear presentable and not enough to be compared unfavorably to a street-walker.

Oh, and she had a samurai sword sticking out of her belly.

"That's weird."

"What is, Sir?" asked one of the CSIs.

He pointed to a spot on the floor, where blood had impacted in one long streak, as opposed to the large black pool beneath her. "See that blood right there? It couldn't have come from her getting stabbed. It hit the floor at a downward angle, meaning somebody else got slashed."

He took another sip of his coffee. "Which means she was the one using the sword in the first place."

Maria glanced down at the body, then back up at him. "You think a pretty little teenager like that was trying to kill whoever lives here?"

"Look at her knuckles." He pointed. "They've got calluses. There's scars running all down her arms and legs, and you can see where some bruises on her face still haven't healed. That indicates either physical abuse, which I doubt, or hardcore martial arts training. She's definitely got the muscle definition for it. Somebody trained this girl to be an assassin."

She stared at him with extreme skepticism.

"Get fingerprints on that handle," he ordered the nearest CSI, ignoring her. "And get blood samples to analyze. I'm betting you'll find two different DNA matches."

"Sure thing, Detective." He began at once.

"Speaking of which, do we have an ID on the victim yet?"

Dr. Valencias shrugged. "How the hell should I know? I just get paid to find out what she died of."

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Since when has that stopped you?"

She sighed. "We don't. She's old enough for a driver's license but she doesn't have one on her. We took fingerprints and dental impressions but... well, this isn't a TV show. It'll take some time before we know."

"Keep me posted." He glanced over at Officer Jackson, who had just entered. "What's up?"

"Computer search came back, finally. House belongs to Agnes Bellinger. Lives here with her daughter."

Nick nodded. "And where is she right now?"

"No clue. Might not have even come home last night."

"Call me as soon as you know." He started walking towards the door. "Get the crime scene wrapped up and get that body back to the lab." Stepping outside, he emptied the rest of his coffee on the pavement.

"One more thing, Detective!" Jackson told him, coming out of the house. "We got a report of an explosion in an apartment across town, and several bodies wearing the same uniform as the victim in there. You think it might be connected?"

"It's Gotham. Everything's connected. Let dispatch know I'm on my way." He started walking back towards his car.

He sighed. As cliché as it was, he had a bad feeling about this. A cloud had been hanging over him all morning, and he could feel the rain coming.

And there were never any umbrellas in Gotham City.

* * *

The tension in the cargo bay was thick enough to trap any knife that attempted to cut it. Stephanie counted three more members of the crew than just the pilot and copilot, probably hired to load and unload the plane. One of them had loaned Jason some spare clothes, which he had changed into about twenty minutes ago. It consisted of black jeans, a gray tee-shirt and a brown leather jacket, along with matching boots. He would not be strutting down any fashion runways, but the look suited him.

He was standing in the middle of the bay, scanning around as if he sought to remind everybody that he was the one in charge. From what he had explained immediately before they "hijacked" the plane, the private jet was essentially a decoy. He would still take it as a first option, but his years of working with Batman as well as his own sense of self-preservation had taught him to always have a backup plan. He could let his enemies destroy the jet, because they would not expect him to keep a second plane stashed at the airport.

These men, it turned out, were smugglers on his payroll, who had been keeping him supplied with weapons and tech after he lost control of the Kord Corporation. Of course, since this connection was a secret one, it needed to appear as if the crew had been commandeered against their will.

Wendy had chosen to stay in The Compact with Jolisa, while Steph hung out on one of the benches on the side of the bay. Everybody remained silent by some tacit agreement, collectively holding their breath until the danger passed. In this case, the danger was capable of pursuing them at speeds far greater than the cargo plane could ever hope to match. As far as they could tell, however, no fighter jets had even been scrambled.

Jason ducked briefly into the cockpit and exited a moment later with a whisper of a smirk on his face. "Okay, ladies and gents, we're over international waters." They all breathed easier. "We got the supplier to change the meet to Zurich, so we should be there in roughly eight hours. Until then, do whatever the hell you feel like."

He strode over to her and took a seat on the long bench. "Why the long face?"

Steph raised an eyebrow. "You're seriously asking me that after the morning I've just had?"

"Not seriously, no." He grinned.

"You're taking it well."

Jason shrugged. "I've been through enough sudden changes in my life that I've learned to just roll with 'em."

A dark chuckle escaped her. "I think I've been through too many."

"Yeah, no kidding. You've had what, three secret identities by now?"

She nodded. "Sorry I blew up your apartment, by the way."

"Don't be. You weren't the one holding the rocket launcher."

"Yeah, but they only came after you because I went to you for help."

"Hey, I did say you could come find me any time."

She smirked. "I thought that was your way of letting me know you were down with a booty call."

"That too," he admitted with a chuckle, gripping the netting that lined the walls when the plane experienced a brief bout of turbulence. "But since you're pretty much the only member of the Bat-Family who hasn't tried to arrest or 'reform' me, I'm willing to help you any way I can." He stared hard at the other end of the bay. "Especially now that we're in the same boat."

"I appreciate that," Steph replied, releasing her own hold on the netting once the air was calm again. "Thanks for not making me regret it."

"Not a problem."

A few minutes passed in silence, and Stephanie quickly fell victim to the monster that was introspection. The events of that morning welled up inside her like mental bile, and she sought any sort of distraction to keep the dam from bursting.

"So," she began, running her fingers through her hair and leaning closer to Jason. "You said we've got eight hours until we get there, right?"

Jason nodded.

"And you _also_ mentioned being down with booty calls."

"Yeah..."

"Do you think this plane has a bathroom?"

Jason seemed to understand what she was driving at, and smirked. "Mile high club?"

"Oh yeah."

* * *

News of the airport fiasco soon reached Oracle's ears and computer screens at Kord Tower, especially since she had calibrated the news feeds to bring her anything related to Stephanie Brown. A private jet had exploded at Gotham International Airport, and a purple blob of pixels that only she would recognize as The Compact had been briefly captured by nearby security cameras. The jet was owned by a holding company that was several shells deep, and it would take time before she could trace it back to the source.

And now every news outlet in the country was calling her a terrorist.

To be fair, they did not have her name yet, but it was only a matter of time. Oracle was hesitant to jump to the same conclusion that the reporters had, since their lives resembled action movies so much that being in the vicinity of an exploding plane was not too surprising. She just had to find the reason.

Barbara pulled the airport's flight records and discovered that only one plane had managed to take off following the explosion, and she pressed further to find out who the pilot was. The Compact had not been sighted at the airport since, and Steph would not have gone there if she didn't intend on flying out one way or another. The search returned the name Clyde Johnson, and she dug into his personnel file to rummage for clues. Nothing in particular seemed out of the ordinary, so she tapped into her other resources to try and uncover his secret.

She hit paydirt about half an hour later.

Clyde Johnson was an airline pilot by day, but he had been investigated by US Customs agents way more often than normal. He always came up clean, but several sources implied that he had been paying off the agents as a way to conceal his smuggling. She looked through his list of known employers, pulling up a few mobsters and drug kingpins, as well as one name that made her hair stand on end.

"Son of a _bitch_ ," she whispered, then dialed up Bruce's frequency. "Batman, we have a situation."

" _Just a minute, Oracle_." She waited until he was ready. " _Go ahead_."

"Stephanie just left the country."

There was silence for several moments. Then he responded: " _You're certain_?"

"I haven't been able to raise her all morning, and Firewall went offline three hours ago. She got on a plane at Gotham International and it's outside any radar networks. I'm searching satellites but I'm not having any luck so far. She's gone."

She heard him sigh on the other end. " _Damn it_."

" _Do_ _you think this has anything to do with Talia_?" Dick's voice chimed in. " _I don't imagine she'd be too happy that Stephanie shut down her school_."

"That's what I figured, and she said the St. Hadrian's girls are the ones who blew up Firewall. She also told me Wendy Harris and Jolisa Windsor are with her, and that they're getting help from someone else."

" _Wait, how did she tell you this if you haven't been able to raise her_?" asked Tim.

"She left me a message. I tried calling her back but she must have ditched her phone. I've been trying to locate her ever since."

" _And you found something_ ," asserted Bruce. It was not a question.

She nodded, even though none of them could see her. "I know who she's getting help from."

" _Who_?" inquired Dick.

Oracle sighed. "Jason Todd."

There was a long pause. " _WHAT?!_ " Dick and Tim exclaimed at the same time.

" _How do you figure_?" Bruce replied more calmly.

"I pulled the records for the guy flying the plane and came back with the name Clyde Johnson. I did some digging, and..."

" _You discovered that he's one of Red Hood's oldest associates_ ," Batman finished for her.

"Exactly."

" _Wait, I thought Jason_ left _Gotham_ ," protested Tim. " _When did he get back_?"

"It doesn't really matter, since he's gone now." Barbara frowned. "And so is Stephanie."

" _We should be back in about twelve hours_ ," Bruce informed her. " _Stay where you are until we get there_." He disconnected.

Oracle rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right." She began wheeling herself over to the elevator. There was one other person she needed to apprise of the morning's events.

* * *

The landing went as smoothly as Stephanie could have hoped, and before she knew it the cargo ramp was opening and Jason was ushering everybody off the plane.

"Okay, here's how it's gonna go down," he announced as they all walked down the ramp. "Me and the boys here will go meet the supplier and get the cargo onto the plane." He turned to Steph. "You take the girls into town and have fun for a couple hours, then meet me at the hotel. Bank's closed till tomorrow so we've got a little time to kill before we have to go."

She nodded. That sounded fair to her. Jason and the rest of the crew piled into a black SUV that was waiting for them on the other side of the tarmac, while she climbed back up the ramp and entered The Compact.

Wendy had moved to the front seat during the plane trip, but had not left the vehicle. Steph's highly trained detective instincts told her that Proxy was not very happy with their current situation.

"You okay?" She received a sideways glance and a raised eyebrow in reply. "Jason says to take you guys into town while they meet their client and move the cargo onto the plane."

"What kind of cargo?"

"Didn't ask." She backed The Compact down the ramp and onto the tarmac. "I assume it's some sort of contraband, though."

Wendy spotted the black SUV that was driving away and glared after it. "We should follow them."

She wanted to. Something about this did not sit right with her, and if she was still in Batgirl mode then she would not have hesitated to keep a close eye on him. But she left Batgirl back in Gotham.

She shook her head. "Nah, that sounds boring. Besides, do you really wanna go this whole trip without leaving the car?"

The short-haired girl with anger management issues boggled at Stephanie like she had sprouted purple fairy wings and started doing the Macarena. "Are you serious? You know this guy's a criminal, and you don't want to at least keep an eye on him?"

Steph shrugged and started driving. "Okay, first of all, he's a vigilante, just like me. He's just a lot more trigger happy."

"Then why did he hijack a plane and fly it to the capital of Switzerland to pick up contraband? And he doesn't arrest criminals; he _kills_ them. Not to mention what he's done to the rest of your family. You _can't_ be okay with that."

She looked out the window guiltily. "I wasn't around for most of what he did to Bruce, Dick and Tim." She followed the curve of the road leading out to the gate. "I was kinda busy faking my death in Africa. I don't really have anything personal to hold against him."

Wendy rested her forehead in her palm. "So let me get this straight. Just because you've got no personal beef with this guy, you're going to excuse what he did to the people you care about?"

That was not it at all. She decided to play dumb with Wendy anyway, if only to keep from revealing the real truth.

"Sorta?"

"That's bullshit. The Stephanie Brown I know—"

"Is trying to _survive_ right now." They passed the gate and pulled out onto the only road into town, a few car lengths behind Jason's SUV. "Jason knows Talia better than you or I do, and he might be able to help Jolisa too. He's our best chance at staying alive, and if that means looking the other way, then I'll do what I have to."

She glared at the road in front of them. "I'm not Batgirl anymore," she continued. "I can compromise when it keeps me alive."

Proxy stared at her like she did not recognize the person she had suddenly become. "Jesus, Stephanie. What the hell happened to you this morning?"

She sighed. "I don't wanna talk about it. But let's just say I don't have as much room to judge him as you seem to think I do."

The SUV turned at the next intersection, and she did as well.

"You're still following them."

"Yep," she confirmed, and they said nothing else to each other for the rest of the trip.

* * *

"So what do you think it is?" Wendy asked as she peered through a set of binoculars at the meet below. It was an abandoned farm house just off a side road that had taken them two hours to drive to, and they were parked on a hill above. "Drugs? I'll bet it's drugs."

"Nah." Stephanie looked through her own binoculars, one of the few gadgets she had left after the raid on Firewall. Another was the directional microphone that was built into the hood and wired into the speaker system. "From what I've heard, Jason lets other people manage the drug trade and offers them protection. Or at least he did before he just started killing everybody, anyway."

Proxy lowered the binoculars and glanced over at her. "I thought you were away for all that."

"I'm a pretty good student when it comes to Bat history."

"Unlike actual history."

"Hey, I'll have you know I managed a solid B average in that class." She wagged her finger in protest. "Even though I don't actually remember anything from it."

"And here I thought all that scholarship money was going to waste."

"It is now. Can't exactly go to school when I'm on the lam, now can I?"

"You could try taking online classes."

Stephanie was about to launch an appropriately witty retort when the people she assumed were the suppliers pulled up in two white vans and started unloading several large boxes.

"Okay, it's definitely not drugs," admitted Wendy. "Looks more like... weapons."

"Yep," she agreed. " _Big_ weapons."

Jason strode closer to one of the boxes, and Stephanie turned up the volume on the directional mic.

" _That's everything_?" he asked, and the supplier nodded. " _You don't mind if I inspect it a bit first?_ "

" _Not at all. Long as the check clears_."

She could see Jason's smirk from here. " _Not to worry, Dominick. You'll get what's coming to you_."

"Uh-oh," she whispered. There was no way that sentence did not have a double meaning.

He opened the crate and pulled out an AK-47, sliding a magazine into it and pulling back the bolt to check the ammo, then hammered it back into place with his palm.

Then he opened fire.

The sound of gunshots nearly deafened them, and she had to turn the speakers off. Within seconds, the arms dealers were lying dead on the ground, and she turned the microphone back on.

" _Okay, boys._ " Jason leaned the assault rifle against his shoulder. " _Let's get this loaded up and back to the plane. We've got a big day ahead of us tomorrow_."

The men nodded their assent and got to work stuffing the crates into the SUV. Steph and Wendy stared at them dumbly.

"You _still_ wanna look the other way?" Proxy asked venomously.

Stephanie sighed. "If we go down there now it won't end pretty," she said. "Right now we need Jason's help. That's all there is to it."

"Can't believe I came back from Nanda Parbat for _this_."

* * *

Detective Gage's phone started ringing as soon as he got to the second crime scene.

"Gage."

"Got some more info on the homeowner after I checked with the neighbors," Officer Jackson's voice informed him. "Agnes Bellinger was her birth name, but she goes by Crystal Brown. Turns out she works at West Mercy Hospital."

"That explains the whereabouts."

"Yeah, but here's the weird thing: her shift ended eight hours ago. She was most likely home when the incident occurred."

"Okay, that is a little weird." He started to apply the brakes. "I'll stop by the hospital later anyway, just in case."

He stopped his car a few yards short of the fire truck and ambulance that had arrived on scene some time ago. An officer named Gerald Conrad came to meet him as he stepped out. He was mixed-race, the son of an African-American mother and Irish-American father, and his name tended to lead people to expect a... different person before they actually met him. Nick was a little embarrassed to admit that he had committed that mistake.

"Fire under control yet?"

"Fire units were the first ones to respond to the scene, so it's just about taken care of."

"Good. We know who the apartment belonged to?"

He shook his head. "To be perfectly honest, Detective, everyone in this part of town is pretty much a glorified squatter. Property manager's lazy as hell and doesn't keep good records. All she could tell me was the tenant was a white male, six-foot-three, two-hundred-thirty pounds of rock hard muscle. My guess is he would've defended himself."

"Which explains the bodies in the alley." It was a simple conclusion really, considering that the first victim had been an assailant who was repelled. "They must have come after him. Any distinguishing features?"

"Not really," Officer Conrad replied. "She didn't even know his name, and nobody in Crime Alley uses their real one anyway."

It wasn't much to go on, but he still had other leads to chase. "I'd like to examine the bodies while we're waiting for the fire to go out."

"By all means."

He knelt down over the bodies of the two victims. One had been impaled in a similar manner to the first victim he had seen this morning, while another was pinned to the asphalt by a sword that had been stabbed through her shoulder. Neither was alive.

There were bloodstains all over the pavement, which suggested a large battle had taken place. "What the hell happened here?"

"Hey, don't ask me."

"Have you at least asked the neighbors?"

"Yeah, but they didn't see much. All they saw was him running down the hallway with some blonde girl just before the apartment exploded. By the time they got down the fire escapes they found these two lying in the alleyway and everybody else was gone."

"Blonde?" he repeated out loud, and was about to ask him for further details when he spotted movement behind a trash bin. "Wait here." He drew his sidearm and advanced.

He got in front of the trash bin and lowered his gun when he saw what was behind it. It was another schoolgirl, and she was bleeding quite profusely near her neck. Her once white blouse had been stained a deep scarlet, and she was cradling a knife in her hands. She did not seem to be in great shape.

"Get the paramedics!" he ordered. "I found a survivor!"

Officer Conrad obeyed and relayed the request over the radio. Nick stepped closer to the girl.

"It's okay," he said soothingly, holstering the gun. "You're safe now. I know you must be in shock, but can you tell me what..." He stopped talking when she rose up and came straight at him with the knife. "Whoa!"

Despite losing at least a pint of blood, she tackled him with almost inhuman speed, far too quickly for him to draw his pistol again. "We are dead!" she shouted in a crazed voice, raising the knife above her head like some kind of ritualistic dagger. He raised his arm to shield himself.

 _Bang_!

The girl dropped to the side with a bullet hole through her temple. He sat there for a second before scrambling to his feet and looking over at Officer Conrad, who had drawn his weapon and fired on instinct. "Thanks." He looked down at the girl. "Too bad, though. I wanted to ask her some questions."

"Wouldn't have gotten the opportunity anyway if she'd killed you."

"Good point." At least this confirmed his suspicions that the schoolgirls were trained killers.

"Cancel the paramedics," Officer Conrad said into the radio. "Send the coroner."

"Detective!" one of the firemen called from the entrance of the alley. "Get over here! Found something you might wanna see!"

He acquiesced, jogging to the end of the alley. "What is it?"

"We found this in the apartment." The fireman handed him a bright red helmet, covered in soot and slightly warped by the heat. "Mean anything to you?"

Detective Gage froze. He may not have been in Gotham as long as some of the force, but he had done his homework. He knew exactly what this was.

"Well, we've got an ID on the apartment owner, at least. But how is this connected with...?" He turned to Officer Conrad. "You said the neighbors spotted him with a blonde woman, right?"

He nodded.

"Son of a bitch." He finally remembered the last time he had heard the name Brown. A young, very blonde college student had once walked in on him snooping through Barbara Gordon's files, and had introduced herself as Stephanie Brown. The same Stephanie Brown, he was sure, whose house had just been broken into this morning.

The pieces were starting to come together. "Get the bodies bagged and tagged and delivered to the GCPD forensics lab." He started racing back to his car. "I've got one more stop to make."

* * *

"Well, here we are," said Jason as he opened the door to their hotel suite. "Pretty good place to pass the night, wouldn't you say?"

She had to admit, it _did_ look pretty luxurious. The floors and walls were tiled with white marble, and the size of just one room easily dwarfed her house. A giant television screen was the first thing that caught her eye, as well as the dark red couch. There was a door on the right that led to the bedroom.

They had met at the lobby of the hotel after Jason and the crew had finished transporting the guns back to the plane. She did not mention that she and Wendy had been spying on him.

"I guess," She walked further inside, spinning around to examine the room some more. "But did you have to tell them we were newlyweds?"

He shrugged. "Only way to get the honeymoon suite. Besides, it makes a good cover story."

"And where did you get the money for this room if the bank's not open till tomorrow?"

"I didn't. They don't bill you here until you check out."

"Well in that case, why didn't you just go for the penthouse?"

"Don't want to attract _too_ much attention." He sat down on the couch. "Besides, I gave your two girlfriends that one."

"Ah." She plopped down next to him.

"So what do you say we break this place in like proper newlyweds?" he suggested with a grin. "You know, to keep up appearances?"

Stephanie shook her head and looked away.

He frowned. "Something wrong?"

' _Yeah, I was just reminded that you're still a super-criminal and I have no idea what I was thinking getting myself involved in this_.' Steph decided not to say it. She had gotten better at keeping her monologues internal, at least.

"No, it's just... I'm really tired," she told him instead. "Let's just have dinner and go to bed."

Jason laughed. " _Now_ you're acting like we're married."

* * *

Barbara wheeled herself into West Mercy hospital with her brow furrowed. She had not had a very nice morning, and she had a few words for Mrs. Brown. She did not care that such anger should have been directed at Stephanie herself; she could not reach her, so she had to make do with her mother. Then again, Crystal would probably end up getting just as angry with her daughter.

Good. She needed company.

She proceeded up the elevator to the third floor Nurse's Station. "Can I help you?" the nurse behind the desk inquired.

"I'm looking for Nurse Brown," she uttered tersely.

The nurse frowned at the mention of that name, but proceeded to ask her the standard battery of questions.

"Name?"

"Barbara Gordon."

"Relation?"

"Friend of the family."

The nurse sighed and passed her a clipboard. "Sign this." She did so, and handed it back. "She's in room 302. But she's got a visitor."

Barbara blinked. A visitor? Why should that matter? "Who?"

"Police Detective," the nurse answered. "Cute one, too." Her frown persisted. "You'll have to wait 'till he's done."

She glared. "I don't know if you caught the last name, but I'm the Police Commissioner's daughter." She was not in the mood for any delays. "I'm going in there now. Stop me if you can."

The nurse shrugged. "Whatever."

With that obstacle vanquished, Barbara propelled herself into room 302, ready to unleash the fury that had been building up all morning. When she opened the door, however, whatever words she had planned to say slipped away from her like ashes in the wind.

Crystal Brown was lying on the bed in front of her, attached to a respirator and heart monitor. Her torso was heavily bandaged, and at the moment she was unconscious.

"Hey," Detective Nick Gage greeted as soon as he saw her. "What brings you here?"

She had forgotten. "I could ask you the same thing."

"Murder investigation," he answered. "A teenager was found dead in this woman's house this morning with a sword through her gut." He paused, frowning. "Guess somebody must have avenged her."

Barbara stared at the barely moving body on the hospital bed, and in that moment she understood exactly why Stephanie Brown had chosen to flee the country.

* * *

Jason's eyes opened slowly, and he examined the darkened room to see if anybody was watching him. Once he had determined that the coast was clear, he sat up, trying to think. He usually slept like a log unless there was some reason for him to be up. Most of the time it involved someone staring at him, but he had already ruled that out.

Some of his mind's sharper faculties had returned by then and reminded him that Stephanie had been lying down next to him when he went to sleep. He stood up and ventured across the room to investigate. As he neared the bathroom he heard noise coming from within, and when he pressed his ear to the door, he discerned that it was running water. He waited for several minutes for her to come out, but the water continued to run far longer than it should have.

He sighed. Privacy be damned; if she was in trouble in there, he would never forgive himself. The door was unlocked, so he turned the handle slowly and opened it. Stephanie was standing in front of the sink, scrubbing her hands obsessively. He could see that some of her skin had been rubbed raw, and would bleed soon if she did not stop.

She turned to look at him, and from the redness around her eyes he could tell that she had been crying.

"It won't come out," she said in the form of a squeak, continuing to rub her hands vigorously.

Jason sighed again and stepped forward, turning off the sink. Stephanie stood there for a moment before completely breaking down, wrapping her arms around his torso and sobbing violently into his chest. A few moments passed before he embraced her in return, running one hand up and down her back as she continued to weep.

"It's okay," he whispered as he held her tighter, not caring what had brought about this fit of emotion, only that she was hurting and needed comfort. "Everything's going to be okay."


	3. Exodus Part 3

Daylight snuck through a gap in the curtains and crept slowly along the floor, climbing up the bed to deliver warmth and light to a face that welcomed neither. Stephanie grunted and lifted her arm over her eyes. "Five more minutes."

"Wake up, sleepyhead," Jason told her as he finished opening the curtains. "We've got a big day ahead of us."

"I don't wanna go to school," she groaned, which told him the ferry from Dreamland had not yet docked. "Oh wait."

' _Right. I forgot that I can't go to school now because I'm cavorting with a wanted criminal in Switzerland. Silly me_.'

He chuckled and walked over to the bed, lifting up the covers. She struggled valiantly, but he ultimately succeeded in tearing the blanket from her clutches and tossing it across the room. "Sorry, got a schedule to keep. Go take a shower and you'll be fine."

Stephanie glared at him like a wounded animal. "You could at least offer me waffles."

"I'll have room service bring some up." He clapped his hands together loudly. "Now come on; rise and shine."

"Bleh." She began shambling across the floor over the bathroom. Once there, she shed her clothes and stepped into the shower, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it held a full complement of soaps and shampoos as opposed to the usual cheap stuff.

"Thank God for four star hotels." She used the fancy assortment of backlit buttons in front of her to activate the shower. To her slight confusion, it did not shoot out jets of hot water at her, but flowed in one long stream. "And it has a waterfall shower," she added with delight. "A girl could get used to this."

She slapped her forehead. ' _Inside voice! Inside voice! Talking to yourself in the outside voice makes you sound like a crazy person_.' She sighed and grabbed a bar of lavender-scented soap.

Lathering herself up, she let the water cascade over her, washing away all the sweat and dirt and ugliness of the previous day. She shampooed her long blonde hair, following up with some conditioner. She located a razor on one of the shelves, which she used to give her pits and legs a long overdue shave. After that she just stood under the water and let it flow.

After a few minutes of enjoying the sensation of warm water running over her skin, memories of what had happened the night before started to blossom inside her mind like a slowly spreading bloodstain. She looked at her still red hands and fought the urge to start scrubbing them all over again.

"Hey, did you fall in there?" Jason called, hammering on the door. "Hotel water's not free, you know!"

"You're not my mom!" she protested, for lack of a better retort. ' _Great one, Steph. Now he's sure to think of you as a grown woman_.'

"And you're not five years old. Now grow up and get out of the shower."

Stephanie sighed and obeyed, pressing another button to stop the water and sliding the door open. She dried herself quickly using one of the fluffy white towels stacked on the toilet, then tended to her hair, a process that took fifteen minutes. She could have done it in five, but with his attitude he deserved to wait a while. Finishing off with some expensive-looking deodorant, she donned a bathrobe and tied the sash tight, then left the bathroom.

He was still looming judgingly outside her door with his arms crossed when she exited. "What?"

"Care to explain why you've suddenly reverted to childhood?"

' _Because I'm running away from my promises_ again _and you woke me up after I cried myself to sleep so I feel like crap_ ,' she babbled mentally, but managed to keep it inside.

"Parental issues, remember?" she told him instead. "I don't respond well to male authority figures." She wrinkled her nose. "Why are _you_ acting all responsible, anyway?"

He raised an eyebrow. "What made you think I wasn't?"

"The criminal thing, mostly." She moved past him, trying not to let her wet feet slip on the tile as she trekked over to her suitcase. She produced a pair of too-small jeans that had fit when she bought them a year ago, a purple undershirt and a green 3/4 sleeve shirt, as well as a purple bra and matching panties. "Some privacy?"

Jason rolled his eyes and turned around. "So just because I don't operate on the right side of the law that means I must be an immature slob?"

She took off the robe and started sliding into the panties, then the bra. "Your previous living quarters would say so."

"Hey, I might have had cockroaches, but did you see any trash lying around?"

"Not really." She pulled on her jeans while challenging the zipper to a death match. After a valiant struggle, she managed to button them. ' _I need to get some new clothes._ '

"I might have abandoned most of what Batman taught me, but Alfred's lessons stay with you forever. I try and stay organized so I can find things in the thirty seconds it takes to get the hell out of there."

"Which explains why you barely escaped that apartment with the shirt on your back." She pulled a purple undershirt over her head, then finishing with the green shirt. "You can turn around now."

He did so. "That was your fault. Normally I don't have a rocket launcher pointed at me when I have to pack up and leave."

Stephanie shrugged. "Like you had anything valuable in there anyway."

"My costume was worth thirty thousand dollars."

"Pfft, Batman's is worth ten times that." She stepped away from the suitcase and began walking past him into the main room of the suite. Her feet were dry now, but she could wait to put on her shoes. She saw waffles on the breakfast table and smiled. Yes. This appeased her. "And besides, aren't you getting a ton of money out of the bank today?"

He followed her to the table, and they both sat down. "Yeah. Speaking of which, I have some bad news on that front."

"Talia didn't block you from withdrawing it, did she?" She started slathering syrup over her plate. "Because these waffles aren't going to pay for themselves."

Jason shook his head. "Nothing like that. There's too much in the account to withdraw in cash, so they're having a set of gold cards delivered."

"Gold cards?" She put on her very best "I-am-confused" face to make sure he got the message. "I thought all the hip baddies on the run used bearer bonds."

"Only in the movies." He leaned back in his chair and explained: "Bearer bonds went out of style in the '80s, but Hollywood didn't get that memo so scriptwriters just use them to sound smart. Best way to do it nowadays is to get a bunch of preloaded credit cards and stuff 'em in a briefcase. We've got about seven hundred fifty million dollars worth coming later this afternoon."

She nearly choked on her waffle. "Seven hundred fifty million?" she repeated after swallowing. "I'll admit it's not Bruce Wayne money, but if you had that much in a briefcase you'd be set for life."

"Or have just enough to wage a small war on Leviathan."

Steph frowned. "Say what?"

"I thought that was why you came to me."

"No, I came to you to help me get _away_ from Talia." She washed down the leftover waffle chunks with some orange juice. "Granted, that plan didn't initially involve hopping on a plane to Europe, but we pretty much got smoked out of Gotham so I didn't really have a choice." She applied more syrup to her plate. "If I wanted to get caught up in Bruce's war I would have stayed there."

"Wasn't that the reason you became Batgirl in the first place?"

Stephanie shook her head as she swallowed her next bite. "No, it wasn't. I made a promise to Cassandra when she ditched Gotham after Bruce died, and Barbara gave me her blessing to carry the torch. Last time I worked for Bruce before Batman Incorporated, he fired me."

She began cutting the waffles into little slices with her fork. "Carrying on Bruce's legacy is something Dick, Tim and Damian already have covered." She took a bite, then continued. "I still have a huge amount of respect for Batman, but I stopped trying to prove myself to him after it almost got me killed."

"I know the feeling." It got quiet for a few moments.

' _Great, here comes the awkward silence—my favorite part._ '

She was not telling him everything. She could not, just yet. The real reason she had not gone to Batman for help was because after what she had done, she knew that she would not be welcome. None of the others would understand.

But Jason just might.

In the sudden lull, Stephanie found her mind returning to what he had said earlier.

"Wait, if we can't pick up the cards until later, why the hell did you get me up so early?" She pouted. "A girl needs her beauty rest, you know."

"They did let me withdraw a few thousand in cash." Jason pulled a massive amount of bills out of his jacket pocket and passing her a stack. "Here. Go buy yourself something nice. I figure you'll be needing some new clothes now." He wrinkled his brow. "And it's ten o'clock."

It took several moments for Stephanie to be able to move again. She had never seen so much cash in her life, much less had it offered to her. She finally convinced her hands to take it, very hesitantly, from his grip.

"So you woke me up to send me out shopping?"

"There's a bunch of high end shops in town," he said. "Get yourself something nice to wear."

"You're gonna spoil me if you're not careful." She smiled.

He grinned back. "You say that like you weren't spoiled already. Now get out of here. I'll see you later today."

"You got it, partner."

"And don't spend it all in one place!" he called after her as she left.

* * *

Caroline's Diner had become an important place in Nick and Barbara's lives. It was where they first met, where they met again after the first meeting did not go so well, and where they continued to meet for coffee every Monday. One could almost call it a courtship, if one was also inclined to get beaten over the head with a pair of escrima sticks.

Barbara admitted that the Detective was cute, but he was not exactly her type. Or rather, he was too close to being a certain guy she used to date for her to feel comfortable calling their relationship that. He was handsome, had an interest in justice, and was always ready with a lame wisecrack. The only things missing were the acrobatics and the finger stripes.

As for Nick, while Barbara was certainly attractive, she was also his boss's daughter and he did _not_ want to incur the wrath of Commissioner Gordon unless he was certain that she felt the same way about him. And as far as he could tell, she did not.

So they both continued to meet every week as friends, and neither tried to make it more than that. It was a comfortable little rut, one of the few remaining in their ever-changing lives.

But something was different this time.

"Thanks for agreeing to this."

"This is the same time we meet every week."

"I know, but, thanks anyway." The waitress arrived with their coffee, and he grabbed it carefully from her hands. "I wouldn't go so far as to call this an interview, but the case I'm working does sort of involve you."

"How's that?"

"Well for one thing, we both ended up in the same hospital room yesterday." He ripped open a sugar packet and poured it into his coffee, then reached over for one of the stirrers. "How do you know Crystal Brown?"

"I tutor her daughter in Computer Science." It was technically true, though that was not all she mentored her on and their "sessions" would no longer be a thing if she stayed out of the country for much longer. "I tried calling to discuss some things with her and she didn't answer, so I dropped by the hospital instead."

He could check. She actually had tried calling Crystal before deciding that a face to face conversation would work better.

Nick appeared to take her word for it, stirring the coffee as he mulled over his next words. "Have you seen her daughter recently?"

She put on her very best poker face before answering. "No. That's why I was contacting her mother in the first place. She didn't show up."

"You know, I actually met her daughter once." He raised the coffee to his lips and took a sip now that it was sufficiently sweetened.

"When?" She tried to hide her reaction.

"After we first met, I dropped by your office to try and make a better second impression," he explained. "You weren't there, but I met a student who introduced herself as Stephanie Brown."

Barbara's blood froze. She could tell what was coming next from the way he had said that.

"Have you ever met somebody and felt like they already knew you, even though, as far as you know, you've never seen them before?" She shook her head, lying without words. "I thought she was a little weird at first, but then I thought the same thing about you so I decided to cut her a little slack."

"A wise decision."

He leaned forward and spoke more quietly. "And you know, I never really gave it much thought after that, but then something weird happened."

Barbara's hands started trembling almost imperceptibly, and she released the coffee mug to stop it from clattering.

"I'm not sure if your dad told you about this, but I sort of developed the same kind of rapport with Batgirl that he has with Batman. Right before she dove into that prison riot a couple months ago, Batgirl told me to..." He chuckled. "To tell _you_ how I really feel about you."

Well _that_ was unexpected.

"And I got to thinking: how did Batgirl even know who you were? What connection did she have to you? It was that same oddly personal thing, but coming from somebody else."

She had gotten good at concealing her fear over the years, but she still kept a nervous eye out for anybody who might be overhearing them.

"Ever since then, I've been doing a little digging," he continued, oblivious to her search. "I learned that Stephanie was the daughter of Arthur Brown, better known as The Cluemaster. The same Cluemaster who, it turns out, was being held in Blackgate. I did some asking around and it turns out that before he was declared dead, Cluemaster was foiled by a vigilante known as Spoiler, who was later seen running around with Robin."

Barbara's mind began devising methods of hiding his body, but she quashed the urge. That was not how she operated.

"But the pieces didn't really start coming together until I pulled some old case files on Black Mask, who supposedly tortured Spoiler almost to death during the gang war." She bristled at the memory. "And then I got access to records from the Thompkins Clinic from around that time, and do you who I found listed as a patient?"

She did not have to guess.

"Stephanie Brown." He tore open a packet of creamer and dumped it into the coffee, then stirred it some more. "She supposedly died under Leslie Thompkins' care, but she resurfaced a year later and started attending Gotham U, where I met her," he finished. "And apparently Cluemaster was so upset at Batman over his daughter's death that he outed her as Spoiler on live television."

He finished stirring the coffee and took another sip. Barbara had not so much as touched hers. "So she's got an interest in vigilantism, a connection to the Bat family, and long blonde hair. It didn't take long to put two and two together."

It took every ounce of control she had not to lunge at him and start with the choking.

"I didn't connect most of that until what happened yesterday," he admitted. "But there is one more thing. I reviewed that first case where Batman and Robin foiled Cluemaster with the Spoiler's help, and the officer reports seeing her wrap a chain around Cluemaster's neck before being talked down by Batman." He leaned forward. "And that leads me to wonder who exactly stuck that sword through the victim's belly."

Her restraint broke. She exploded into motion, reaching over the table and grabbing Detective Gage by the tie, spilling her coffee in the process.

"You do not breathe a word of this." Her voice was low and threatening. "Not a word to the rest of the precinct, and _especially_ not to my father. Do you understand me?"

He appeared stunned by the sudden mood shift, and grimaced as some of the coffee began flowing into his lap.

" _Do you understand me_?" she repeated through clenched teeth. He nodded, and she released him.

By this time the waitress had come over with a towel to clean up the mess. Barbara put a few bills on one of the dry spots on the table, then lifted herself into her wheelchair and rolled out of the diner.

She was halfway back to her car when Nick came running after her. "Hey, wait up!"

He moved in front of her and smiled wryly. "Was it something I said?"

Barbara rolled her eyes.

"Okay, listen. Assuming the conclusion you arrived at is even true..."

"Well, I wasn't sure until you just confirmed it with your reaction back there." She cursed her still-unresolved anger management issues, as well as her overprotective streak when it came to Bat family secrets.

"Okay, fine, you figured it out. It's not like you're the first. But why the _hell_ did you tell me in a public place? Do you have any idea who could have been listening?"

He stared blankly at her, as though he really had not thought that one through.

"Oh, for the love of..." She rested her forehead in her palm.

"Look, I'm not planning on telling anybody. I just need to know all the facts if I'm going to solve this case."

"There are some things you're better off not knowing," she told him, climbing into the driver's seat. "This is one of them."

"Hey, all I'm asking is for a little cooperation." He lifted the wheelchair before she could grab it, and she allowed him to place it in the back seat. "Just tell me when you last spoke with Stephanie Brown."

Barbara wanted to just slam the door in his face, but for whatever reason she decided to throw him a bone instead. "The last time I heard from her she left me a phone message telling me she was leaving. That's all I'm going to tell you."

"Wait!" he shouted before she closed the door. "One more thing. Just tell me who you really are."

"Not on your life, Detective." She shut the door and drove off, leaving him standing there on the curb.

"Same time next week?" he called out after her, but received no reply. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets. "Didn't think so."

* * *

"Wendy! Wendy, wake up! We're going _shopping_!"

"Bwuh?" Wendy rubbed the crust out of her eyes and blinked them open to find her perky blonde pest of a friend waving at her. She closed them again and wrapped her pillow around her head. "G'way."

" _Very_ articulate," Steph remarked, ripping away the covers. "I take it you had a restful night's sleep?"

"Was until you showed up."

"Well too bad, sleepyhead. Time to get in the shower."

"Screw that." She pushed herself upright. "I don't trust hotel showers. The handicap bars are never secure enough."

"I could hold you up," Steph suggested, then immediately flushed.

"Yeah, I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that."

"Sorry, that sounded less awkward in my head." She grinned sheepishly. "Still, I wonder how much better the penthouse shower must be than the one I used this morning," she continued, walking into the spacious bathroom. "Oh my God, it has a _double waterfall_!" she shouted like it was the second coming of Christ.

"You're not about to take a second shower, are you?"

"I'm seriously considering it!"

Wendy muttered obscenities under her breath and shuffled to the edge of the bed, then into her wheelchair. She had not had time to pack any change of clothes, so she was still wearing the same outfit that she had the previous day. How Stephanie managed to pack anything was still a mystery to her.

"How's Jolisa doing?" The blonde strolled back into the room and leaned over where her former classmate lay sprawled in the opposite bed.

"She almost woke up last night, but I put her down again before it got messy. Gotta thank Batman for those tranqs."

"I would if Batman and I were _speaking_." Wendy slapped her forehead.

"Right, I forgot for a second that we're on the lam."

"Just until we can get Jolisa the help she needs," she reminded her. "There's only one person who can help her and Jason's our best shot at finding them."

"I still say I could have found her with satellites."

"Not with Firewall obliterated you can't." She straightened up. "There is one other favor I can call in but he's got an even worse rep than Jason, so let's just stick with the plan for now, okay?"

"Fine."

"Nngh."

They both looked over to Jolisa, who had begun to stir. Steph reached over to the nightstand and grabbed a pneumatic syringe, injecting it into Jolisa's neck. The girl immediately became immobile again.

"Can't have you waking up just yet." She brushed the dark hair out of her eyes. "I promise we'll find a way to get you back to normal."

She turned to Wendy. "Now let's go shopping!"

* * *

For the second day in a row, Barbara was fuming from the morning she had suffered through. She was beginning to doubt that she would ever have a pleasant one again, especially with the dark times that surely awaited them. She parked her SUV at the end of the long stone driveway that led into the cave from the road, in front of the Bat Computer where the rest of the family had assembled.

"Where were you last night?" Bruce asked her as she got out of the car.

"Hello to you too." She began wheeling herself further into the cave. Bruce was standing in front of the computer with his arms crossed, and Dick stood by his side. Tim leaned against one of the walls of the cave, while Damian had climbed atop one of the many consoles. They all stared at her.

"Well?" demanded Damian.

"I went home and got some sleep." She glared at the little brat. "I wasn't aware I needed to keep you updated."

"I told you to stay where you were."

"Right, because you're the boss of me." She would have shrugged off that remark under most circumstances, but stress tended to awaken the sarcasm monster.

"Technically he is." Damian reminded her.

"Hey, I may be part of Batman Inc. but I don't answer to any of you." She extended her glare to all of them. "And after the morning I had yesterday I needed a damn break."

"We might have run into complications on the way home," Batman explained. "I needed you to stay online so you could alert us of any further crises that might have come up."

Barbara blinked. Had she really been so focused on finding Stephanie that she had forgotten her responsibilities like that?

"And you're not telling us everything," asserted Dick. "You went looking for Stephanie, didn't you?"

"Yes," she answered firmly.

"What did you find?" asked Bruce.

She sighed and wheeled herself up to the Bat Computer. Within moments she accessed the security cameras at West Mercy Hospital, then brought up a view of room 302. The rest of them shifted their positions to see.

"I tried finding her mother to see if she had any idea where Stephanie might be going or why she may have left." A nurse walked into the room and pulled back the curtain around one of the beds, and the rest of them saw it. "I got the answer to the second question at least."

Tim was the first to speak. "Is she...?"

"She's stable," Barbara answered. "She didn't lose enough blood to need a transfusion, so she should recover."

"I don't get it, though; why did Stephanie leave the country? Why didn't she come to us for help?"

"Perhaps she could no longer stand being on the same continent as you, Drake."

"That's not true, and it doesn't even make sense." Tim stabbed a finger in Damian's direction. "We weren't on any continents yesterday morning."

"Well then she must have been trying to get away when she was sure you wouldn't notice."

"It doesn't fit Stephanie's pattern of behavior over the last year," observed Dick. "If her mother was in trouble any other time she would be at her bedside right now. Whatever happened to make her leave the country must have been something big."

"Well good riddance to her, I say. She never did anything more than cause embarrassment."

"Would you quit insulting her like that?!" Tim roared, and it actually got him to flinch a little bit. "Her mother is in the _hospital_ right now!"

"She doesn't seem to care, since she's gallivanting around the world with _Jason Todd_ ," the brat wonder fired back, hopping down off the console to square off with him. "And why do you care anyway? You've been ignoring her ever since that business with Grandfather."

"It's complicated, and I was giving her space!"

"Oh, well she's got all the space in the world _now_ , you buffoon! Nice going!"

"It's not my fault she left!"

"It is so, you contemptible ingrate!"

Tim produced his staff and telescoped it out, while Damian drew his sword. They were about to launch into battle when Bruce uttered an ultimatum.

" _Enough_."

They both backed off, but did not stop glaring at each other.

"You said you know why she left," he continued, looking at Barbara. "Tell us."

She sighed. "There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it." After a few moments she finally managed to convince the words to leave her mouth. "I think Stephanie might have killed somebody."

* * *

"Woo!" Steph exclaimed as the hotel doors parted to allow her and Wendy back inside hefting the numerous bags above her head. "I think I finally understand why rich girls are all about shopping."

Her clothes had taken on a considerably more summery appearance, with a light lavender tank top accented by beige sandals and a white cotton knee-length skirt. She had bought warmer clothes as well, but it was a nice day so she did not feel the need to bundle up. There were several supplies in one of the other bags that had nothing to do with clothes, at least not those that one would wear during the daytime.

Wendy had neglected to change at the store, but Steph had picked out a few changes of clothes for her as well.

"Yeah, it's a real rush to spend money that isn't yours."

"And they called _me_ the Spoiler," she remarked as they crossed the lobby to the elevators. "Would it kill you to lighten up, Wendy? This is _almost_ a vacation."

"I will when you stop overcompensating to hide the fact that you're just as freaked out as I am."

Steph pouted before sighing. "Okay, so I admit to turning up the bubbliness when I'm stressed, but it's gotta be better than channeling Eeyore all the time."

"What can I say, I'm a realist." Wendy rolled herself into the penthouse elevator, and Steph followed. "Although I will admit I'm a fan of the new hair."

"Thanks." She began working a hand through the neck-length cut that she had not sported since the days of abandoned opera houses and piano confessions. "I figured I was due for a dramatic haircut."

"Cutting your hair short only symbolizes exile if you're Asian."

"Where'd you learn that?"

"Nanda Parbat. They didn't exactly 'get' my short hair at first."

"And what, they wanted you to grow it longer?"

"No, they wanted me to shave it all off."

"And now you've got me picturing it."

They both chuckled.

The doors opened and they moved into the penthouse suite. Stephanie set the bags down and sat on the luxurious couch while Wendy rolled over to the bathroom. The bedroom door was still closed like it was when they had left three hours ago.

"Speaking of Nanda Parbat, what made you leave?"

She heard a hefty grunt as Wendy lifted herself out of the wheelchair to do her business. "I went there to get over my Marvin issues. I got over them, so I came home."

"Marvin issues?"

"Oh right; I didn't tell you. Gimme a minute to finish up in here."

Stephanie waited patiently, but twiddled her thumbs as a small indulgence. Babs had related brief snippets of what happened to Wendy and her brother, and she had seen the lengths to which Calculator was willing to go to be reunited with his departed son. Wendy had not inherited that level of psychosis, but Steph had been around enough trauma in her life to know that certain things tended to linger.

Wendy rolled out of the bathroom a minute later. "Anyway, like I was saying; I kept seeing Marvin's ghost and I wasn't sure if it was real or just me breaking from reality, so Babs helped me get to a place that specialized in both. Let's just say it wasn't wheelchair friendly."

"Yeah, isn't it in the Himalayas or something?"

She nodded. "The monks helped me get more balanced and confront a lot of things that I'd been avoiding. It was kinda like psychotherapy and mysticism all rolled into one. Whatever it was, I stopped seeing Marvin so I took the first plane back to the states."

"That's it?"

"Yeah. Had a couple adventures but I expect those by now."

Steph wrinkled her nose but did not pursue the subject any further. Wendy clearly wanted to keep part of her experience a secret. She was not exactly in a position to judge.

"Anyway, I'm gonna put these clothes in the bedroom," the dark-haired girl announced, grabbing a handful of bags and wheeling herself across the room. She opened the door and rolled inside, and then it rapidly shut behind her.

Then Wendy screamed.

* * *

Barbara stared at the faces in front of her and saw the silence that usually came after a bomb blast.

The news had stunned them all, and they each showed it in their own way. Tim wore a look of utter shock, as though he expected to wake from a nightmare at any moment. Damian had his nose upturned and his arms crossed, which was the posture he adopted whenever he wanted to hide how much something affected him. Dick had that hurt expression he got whenever he was forced to reevaluate the way he saw somebody he loved, and Bruce just stood there with that immovable stoic expression that reminded her of the city's many stone gargoyles.

"Wait, _what_?!" Tim shouted after several moments.

"Detective Gage found a body in her house yesterday morning," Barbara explained. "Based on what happened to Firewall I think we can assume it was one of the St. Hadrian's girls coming after Stephanie and her mother. He thinks that she was stabbed after inflicting that wound on Mrs. Brown."

"You mean he thinks Stephanie stabbed her," Dick translated.

She nodded. "I don't think he has enough hard evidence to prove it, but that was what he seemed to be leaning towards. And there's more." Barbara refused to look at them when she spoke her next sentence. "He figured out Stephanie was Batgirl."

"How?" Bruce asked before the rest of them could process that.

"He pulled the Black Mask case files and cross-referenced them with patient records from the Thompkins Clinic around the time of the gang war," she explained with her eyes closed. "And he discovered she was _that_ Stephanie Brown. The one who 'died' around the same time Spoiler disappeared, and who got her secret identity revealed by her father on the evening news."

"That still doesn't prove anything," noted Tim. "He'd need more compelling evidence than a coincidence like that to prove she's Batgirl."

Barbara's cheeks flushed. "I kinda gave him that when I grabbed his tie and threatened him."

"So because of your rashness she's been exposed," Dick accused, and she responded with a glare.

"No, she was exposed because of a little detective work and a lot of blind luck." She crossed her arms. "Sort of like how _Tim_ over there figured out you and Bruce's secret identities."

"Hey, it was mostly detective work."

"I wouldn't trust you to deduce the location of my socks, Drake."

"That's because you have Alfred iron your socks before you'll wear them. Maybe if I touched all of them you'd go barefoot."

"Stay away from my sock drawer, you pervert!"

"Funny, it's usually the pervert making that demand."

"Why, I'll—"

Bruce cleared his throat, and Damian sat back down. "If you're _quite_ finished," he warned before turning back to Barbara, "Perhaps we can continue."

"He wants us to help with the investigation," she blurted, and almost immediately regretted it when she caught the glares that were sent her way. She steeled herself and continued. "And I think that if we want Stephanie to be able to come back home without being arrested, we should at least help him prove her innocence."

The Batcave had always been an unusually quiet place considering the acoustics involved in such a massive underground space, but now everything was dead silent. Nobody spoke. Nobody wanted to be the one to suggest that maybe she was not innocent. Nobody wanted to consider that.

"I'll do it," Tim announced finally.

"You _cannot_ be serious, Drake."

"It's like you said, Damian." He pulled up his cowl. "I've been avoiding her for way too long. And she helped me out when R'as attacked, even though she had every reason to be mad at me. I at least owe her a safe homecoming."

He climbed aboard his bike and rocketed out of the cave.

"Come on, Grayson," Damian ordered, moving towards the Batmobile. "Let's go patrolling. This old cave is musty."

As soon as they flew off, Barbara made to leave as well, but Bruce's massive hand on her shoulder stopped her. "Stay a moment, please."

She turned around, and from the look on his face Barbara could tell that she was not going to enjoy the impending conversation.

* * *

As soon as she heard the scream, Stephanie bolted across the room, kicking open the door with the same force she used to break bones, a task made easier by the fact that it was not locked.

Wendy was struggling with an attacker in front of her, which Stephanie's adrenaline-charged mind finally registered as Jolisa. She had woken up. Not good.

Her former classmate was practically feral, leaping and clawing and generally trying to maul Wendy into submission. Wendy was holding her own against the frenzy, but just barely.

"We are dead! We are dead! We are dead!" Jolisa shrieked over and over, repeating it like a mantra. Stephanie did not wait for the situation to escalate any further, bounding over Wendy and kicking the dark-skinned girl in the chest.

Jolisa did not miss a beat, charging straight towards Stephanie and lashing out with a punch. Steph dipped to the side, pushing the other girl's arm down while simultaneously hitting her jaw with a raised wrist in a Southern Praying Mantis move she had learned from Cass. As Jolisa continued coming after her in a flurry of limbs, she found herself defaulting to the unconventional, fast-moving style instead of her usual "kick first and ask questions later" approach.

While it helped her hold her own against the frenetic pace that Jolisa was setting, it did not subdue the other girl, so she switched to restraining techniques. She twirled around another punch, grabbing her wrist and twisting it around her back. Jolisa elbowed her in the gut, shocking her into releasing the hold. The other girl grabbed her by the hair and tugged down hard, introducing Steph's forehead to her knee before shoving her into the nearest wall.

Returning her attention to Wendy, Jolisa charged at the wheelchair bound girl, who by this time had grabbed her _shinai_ , the _Kendo_ saber she occasionally used to practice. She attacked first, thwapping the other girl across the temple, then her shoulder. Jolisa backed off for a moment, rubbing her arm and wincing. Wendy swung again and the schoolgirl ducked, lashing out with a kick that landed dead center in her gut, rolling her backwards out of the room.

The elevator of the penthouse dinged, and Jason stepped out just in time to see Wendy rolling towards him. He grabbed the handles of the chair and arrested her momentum, bringing her to a stop. He dipped back to avoid the hotel Bible that Jolisa threw at his head right before she crossed the distance between them, leveling a flying kick at his chest.

Jason reacted on instinct, grabbing her by the ankle and the back of her sweater vest, then hurling her into the empty elevator. She got up almost instantaneously, as though being thrown into walls was something that happened to her every day. Jolisa leaped at him again, tackling him to the floor. Jason rolled with the momentum, planting his legs on her abdomen and hurling her into the couch.

"Okay, I think I'm starting to see why they kept you asleep." Good thing he had come up here to check on them. "Because you are mighty aggravating when you're awake."

"We are dead!" she shouted, rushing forward and trying to punch him.

"Yeah, yeah, we heard you the first time." He sidestepped, grabbing her arm and flipping her hard onto the floor, where he wasted no time descending on top of her and using his body weight to keep her in place.

"Hey, you know how to stop her from moving?" he hollered at Wendy as Jolisa thrashed beneath him like a shark.

"Syringe!" She pointed to her left. "In the bedroom!"

"I got it!" Steph shouted from the other room.

"Hurry up!" he demanded as Jolisa started to bite his forearm. "I think she's turning vampire on us!"

"Catch!" Stephanie tossed him the syringe. He snatched it out of the air, then brought it down into her neck and depressed the button. Her jaws slowly loosened their death grip on his arm, and eventually she became still.

"Okay." He stood up and looked at Steph and Wendy. "Maybe it's time you told me why you dragged her along on our little road trip."

* * *

Detective Gage walked into the morgue of the police station feeling heavier than usual. His morning had not gone as planned, and he could not shake the feeling that he might have burned a very important bridge.

' _You_ had _to go blabbing your big secret right there in the diner, didn't you, Nick_?'

It was bad enough that he had pulled his first all-nighter in years to solve the case of Batgirl's identity, but coming out and telling her he knew like that... it was something only a rookie would do. He thought that after a year on the force he would have moved past making stupid decisions of that magnitude.

Hell, maybe he had just been so proud of himself for cracking that little mystery that he just _had_ to brag to somebody. That was another mistake.

He pushed the thought aside as he walked closer to the autopsy table. " _Please_ tell me you have some idea who this is by now, Dr. Valencias. I don't think Jane Doe is going to look very attractive on her tombstone."

"Hello to you too." She removed her blood-soaked gloves. The corpse was resting on the cold steel of the autopsy table with her chest recently stitched back together. "And yeah, dental records came back, and her father came by earlier to confirm. Say hello to Jordanna Spence."

"How's it goin'?" He waved at the body. "Backstory?"

"You know, if you're gonna keep asking me for things outside my job description, I'm gonna have to demand a raise."

He smiled and tilted his head. "Come on, we both know how much family members love opening up to you."

She rolled her eyes, but answered him anyway. "According to her father, she was an ordinary college student attending Gotham U. Until three months ago, that is, when she was accepted into St. Hadrian's Finishing School for Girls."

"Where?"

"Some prestigious academy in England. According to the prospectus, it's supposed to 'help young women realize their personal and professional goals.'"

Gage found it odd that those goals should include attempted murder, but kept that to himself. "An overseas finishing school seems awfully expensive for a Gotham U student."

"She got in on scholarship," Dr. Valencias explained. "He didn't really know any more than that, and you're supposed to be the detective here, not me."

"Every little bit helps, Maria." He took his hands out of his coat pockets and snapped on a pair of gloves.

"I still don't see why you ordered a full autopsy on this girl. She got stabbed and bled out. End of story."

"These scars aren't very old." He ran a gloved finger along one of the longer ones on her upper arm. "I'd say two months, but hey, you're the doctor."

"One and a half."

"Exactly. She got accepted into that school three months ago. Before that I'm guessing she was a model student, right?"

"As far as her parents knew, yeah."

"And this muscle tone," he continued. "It's not even close to the kind you get from years of training. She'd started her fitness regimen _recently_ , probably around the same time she got all these scars."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm not _saying_ anything," He crossed his arms and frowned. "I'm just wondering what the hell was going on at that school that would cause a nice girl like this to run into someone's home with a sword."

"That sounds like the right question to be asking," another voice told them, and they both turned.

He was a young man, probably in his teens, though the cowl made it difficult to tell. He wore a red bodysuit with a black cape, and a set of belts across his chest with a bronze medallion in the center. He seemed to have emerged from the shadows.

"And who are you supposed to be?" asked Maria. "Dr. Mid-Nite?"

"No."

"More importantly, what the hell are you doing here?" demanded Nick.

"Blood work just came back on your victim," the superhero explained, extending a folder as an offering. He took it, then thumbed through the report. "I'll save you some time. The lab found large amounts of next-level mind control drugs similar to the ones Professor Pyg was using."

"And you came to deliver this to me because...?"

"Because they didn't make that connection."

He looked through the folder again to confirm. The chemicals were all there, but the report basically stated that they were still working out what the drug might be. "Okay. Since you're not Dr. Mid-Nite, what do I call you?"

"Red Robin seems to be the second most popular." He seemed fairly annoyed with this line of questioning, like he had somewhere better to be. "I'm with Batman Incorporated."

He started a bit at that news. Batgirl had pretty much been his only contact with the Bat family, since Batman and Robin pretty much only spoke with the Commissioner and Detective Bullock. He wondered briefly why this one had shown up before his mind returned to the events of that morning.

"Did...?" He stopped himself from saying Barbara's name when he remembered that Dr. Valencias was still in the room. "You mind leaving us alone for a minute, Maria?"

"Better idea." She crossed her arms. "Why don't you two get the hell out of my morgue?"

They both stared at her. Eventually she threw her hands up and left. "Fine."

"St. Hadrian's was a training ground for teenage girls, mostly relatives of supervillains, who were then hired out as elite bodyguards," Red Robin continued as soon as she was gone. "They recently secured a contract with an individual calling themselves Leviathan. Leviathan's liaison was Janosz Valentin, Professor Pyg's son. He supplied the mind control drugs your victim was on."

"And what does this have to do with Batgirl?"

"Batgirl was sent in undercover to infiltrate the school and shut it down. They retaliated against her yesterday morning."

He nodded, taking it all in and filing it away for later reference. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"Because I'd rather you not have to arrest Batgirl. Prove her innocent."

"I want to," he said. "And this wouldn't be the first time someone's tried to frame her. But I'm sure you know I have to take all the evidence into consideration."

Red Robin's face tightened. "I do. But promise me you'll try."

"I will." He glanced back at the corpse on the table. "Of course it would help if you had any insight on..." He looked back, and Red Robin had vanished as if he had never been there. Nick frowned.

"So, does that run in the family, or what?"


	4. Exodus, Part 4

" _Stay a minute, please." She turned around, and from the look on Batman's face Barbara could tell that she was not going to enjoy this conversation._

" _You've gotten a lot closer to Stephanie over the last year," he began. "You've been her mentor and you know her better than any of us, even Tim. Do you really believe she could have murdered somebody?"_

_She studied him, trying to gauge why he was asking her that. He was actually harder to read without the cowl, because at least then she could tell his mood by the shape of his eye-slits. Finally she responded._

" _I think you already know the answer to that."_

_Bruce sighed. "When Tim and I first met her, she was dead set on killing her father. I was able to stop her then, but I always..."_

_A sudden flash of anger stabbed her in the chest, though she did not stop to question its origin. "You always_ what _, Bruce? Always thought that if she kept being a vigilante that she'd kill someone? That she'd get killed herself? Tell me what 'always' is supposed to mean."_

" _I always thought I could save her from becoming like her father."_

* * *

Jason grunted as he lifted up Jolisa and carried her back to the bedroom, making sure to cuff her hands together this time in case she woke prematurely again. He walked out into the main room of the penthouse suite again to see Steph and Wendy waiting for him.

"Alright." He scanned between them, crossing his arms with authority. "Tell me why you thought it was a good idea to bring little miss honey badger along."

Steph sighed. "She was the only friend I made at St. Hadrian's. She swallowed a mind control wafer and we're trying to find a way to cure it."

"That much I knew. But why was she acting like a wild animal?"

"I don't know." The blonde shrugged. "She was just as intelligible as you or me when she first started displaying the effects, but I think Johnny Valentine gave her a larger dose than the rest of the Death Girls. She got more and more rabid to the point where we eventually had to just tranq her every few hours." She looked up at him. "And we were hoping _you_ would be able to help us find the cure."

He raised an eyebrow. That was unexpected. "How so?"

"You remember Scarlet?"

He nodded. The daughter of a Russian drug trafficker had been his only real sidekick of sorts, even if all she really did was film his antics while he went on a murder spree.

"Okay, well, what I gleaned from the files Dick and Damian put together is that Professor Pyg tried to turn her and her father into Doll-o-trons by forcing them to wear masks laced with next level mind control drugs. But he only succeeded with her father, who she later suffocated with a pillow in the police station."

"I was there for that part," he said with another nod. "The mask was defective. It was stuck to her face real good but it she didn't succumb to the mind control."

"See, that's the part I don't get." She raised a finger and began conducting some invisible orchestra. "Pyg was all sorts of wacko, but so's the Joker and neither of them have a problem mixing their chemicals. Not to mention the odds of _that_ particular mask being the defective one of the bunch are pretty out there."

He instinctively bristled at the mention of Joker. "Impossible odds come with the territory. What's your point?"

"What if the mask wasn't defective?" Stephanie continued. "What if, by whatever miracle, Scarlet was just immune?"

Jason blinked. It seemed unlikely, but then he never had done any research to back up his own defective mask theory, and Steph's logic made sense.

"And what does this have to do with your friend?"

"Johnny Valentine was Professor Pyg's son, which meant he was using similar drugs." She looked over to Jolisa. "We were trying to find Scarlet on our own when we got attacked."

"Which is why you came to me." He uncrossed his arms. "You need my help to track her down."

Steph nodded. "You wouldn't happen to remember where you left her?"

"Russia," he answered. "With her uncle. No guarantee she stayed there, though."

She set her face into a mask of determination. "Then that's our next stop."

* * *

_She let that sink in for several moments before replying in the calmest voice she could manage: "Well you had a funny way of showing it."_

_He raised an eyebrow. "Pardon?"_

" _Oh, I was just thinking about all the times you forbade her from operating, or sent her packing when she came to you for help, or all the other dozens of times you told her that she wasn't wanted. Was_ that _your way of saving her?"_

_He narrowed his eyes. "Yes. I thought that if I discouraged her from taking up this life that I could—"_

" _Oh, that's bullshit and you_ know _it, Bruce!" she exclaimed, more forcefully than she intended. "If you were really trying to save her from being a criminal you'd have done what you did with your Robins and brought her in."_

" _I_ did _bring her in," he reminded her. "When Tim was at Brentwood I brought her to the Batcave and gave her the training and equipment that she needed to survive."_

" _Oh, you mean the time you revealed Tim's secret identity to her without consulting him?" He glared. "Ooh! Or how about the time you were accused of murder and shut everybody out and I had to send_ Dinah _to kick Cluemaster and Riddler out of her_ house _?"_

" _I had my own problems to deal with at the time," he said. "But I was trying to equip her to carry on the fight in case Tim decided to quit. Or in case... in case something happened to me."_

" _And yet you refused to let her all the way in." Barbara wheeled herself closer. "You told her who Tim was but you didn't tell her_ your _secret. Even when you were bringing her in you still didn't trust her fully. Why?"_

" _You know better than anybody that my trust has to be_ earned _, Barbara. I didn't tell you either at first."_

" _Oh, try harder," she retorted caustically. "It had nothing to do with earning your trust. You just didn't trust her because of her father."_

" _That's not it at all. I even helped her investigate Cluemaster. But my secrets are on a need to know basis. And she didn't need to know."_

_She glared at him. "That's not the whole truth, Bruce. Or do you not remember that time you sent her on a wild goose chase around the city just to prove to her that she couldn't cut it?"_

" _Fine. I didn't think she would survive at the rate she was going. She was reckless, stubborn and angry. That's a bad recipe that can lead to getting yourself killed. And it almost did, if you'll recall."_

" _Yeah, because_ you _fired her!" She stabbed a finger in his direction. "You told her she wasn't cut out for this line of work, so she went and tried to prove that she was! Remember that?"_

_His face tightened and he took a little longer to respond. "I couldn't have foreseen that," he insisted. "And she's proven herself more than capable since she came back. I couldn't keep her away if I wanted to."_

" _Well it looks like you won't have to anymore, big guy," she spat venomously. "Because now she_ is _gone, maybe for good. And don't think for a second that this isn't your fault."_

* * *

Nick stepped onto the Gotham U campus and frowned. The last time he was here he was investigating the murder of Newton Flitwick. Newton had been killed by a local chapter of Reapers, who had left a batarang at the scene. They had hoped to throw off suspicion by implicating one of the city's many vigilantes.

And now he was here on yet another murder case in which Batgirl was the prime suspect.

He sorely wished that it _was_ just another framing attempt, but Jim had reminded him from day one that if you let your biases guide you on a case, the evidence would never lead where you wanted it to. So he had come back here to gather that evidence.

He approached a Hispanic student with a large, muscular build, sporting a letter jacket and a dejected frown on his face. Nick deduced that he had already heard the news.

"Francisco Gracia?" he asked as soon as the student got close enough. "Do you have a minute?"

Francisco eyed him skeptically. "For what?"

He produced his badge. "Detective Nick Gage; Gotham PD. I need to ask you a few questions about Jordanna Spence."

"You mean about how she died, right?" His features hardened.

The tone in Francisco's voice surprised him. Most college students that he interviewed were likely to avoid the subject and wait for him to bring it up, but this one apparently liked to get straight to the point.

He nodded solemnly. "It'll only take a few minutes."

"Alright," said the college student, walking over to a nearby bench and sitting down. Nick took a seat next to him.

"Is it okay with you if I record this interview?"

"Yeah, whatever."

He clicked on the tape recorder and began with the questions.

"What was your relationship with Jordanna?"

"Close friends." The expression on his face did not change, though his eyes betrayed just a hint of emotion. "We've known each other since we were little."

"You ever date?"

Francisco laughed, as though the very idea was ludicrous. "I'm already in a committed relationship."

He nodded, though he got the feeling that there was more to the story. It did not seem relevant though, so he continued. "When was the last time you saw her?"

"Three months ago," he told the detective sadly. "She got transferred to some rich girl school after she got a scholarship."

"St. Hadrian's," Nick confirmed. "You didn't stay in touch?"

"Couldn't. It was all the way in freakin' England, and she wasn't allowed any outside contact. Less of a boarding school and more of a prison, if you ask me."

From what Red Robin had told him about the school, he figured that was an accurate description. Except that prisons tended to _avoid_ teaching inmates how to do things like making napalm out of household chemicals.

"Was she in any trouble with her folks?"

"No." He shook his head. "Why?"

"People who get along with their parents typically don't get shipped off to boarding school."

"They do if they get a scholarship and a special invitation." Francisco tucked a finger underneath his bottom lip as another thought occurred to him. "She had a pretty rocky relationship with her dad, but only because she blamed him for letting her mom get killed by that White Knight guy."

He blinked. This was an interesting development.

White Knight was a supervillain whose father had been murdered by Dr. Phosphorus and who had gone on a killing spree a few months earlier. What made his case unique was that he tracked down and slaughtered the families of other supervillains, sewing wings to their corpses and posing them like angels. He believed that doing this would atone for the sins of their relatives.

"Why would he target her mother?"

Francisco shrugged. "No idea. But rumor was that she was related to some old crime boss. Her mom's maiden name was Smith, if that helps."

"Every bit does." He frowned. It had to be more than a regular criminal for her to be recruited by St. Hadrian's, but Nick kept that part to himself. Also, Smith was a very common last name. That information did not exactly narrow the search.

Detective Gage furrowed his brow. "Did Jordanna have any enemies? Rivalries, that kinda thing?"

"You mean did she have anybody who'd want to murder her?" A grim look crept over his face. "She wasn't exactly renowned for her social skills, I'll tell you that. But most of the school only wanted to see her get her comeuppance. I can't think of anybody who'd want her dead."

"Not what I meant, for the record," Nick clarified. "Was there anybody she just didn't get along with at all?"

"One girl," Francisco replied. "Stephanie Brown."

He could not hide his reaction to that. That was one connection that did not bode well for how he hoped the case would turn out. "And what was their relationship like?"

"Just standard teenage girl drama. Nothing that would lead to murder."

' _I'm not so sure about that_ ,' he reflected silently. "Anything else you can tell me?"

Francisco shook his head. "Nope, sorry."

Digging a card out of his wallet, Nick stood up and handed it to him. "If you remember anything else, my number's on there. Call me anytime, day or night."

"Sure thing."

Nick started walking away, but Francisco's voice stopped him. "Hey, Detective?"

He turned around. "Yes?"

"If you catch who did this, make 'em pay," he said, low and angry, but not at him. "Promise me you'll make 'em pay."

Nick frowned, but nodded all the same. "I promise."

* * *

The drive to the bank was carried out in relative silence. Stephanie, Wendy and Jason took The Compact. Jolisa was in the back seat like before, still restrained in case she chose an inopportune time to wake up. The three crewmembers that Jason had affectionately dubbed "The Boys" had taken another SUV for security, and Steph noticed they were armed with the weapons they had stolen yesterday, but did not mention it.

She pulled to a stop in front of the bank, and Jason exited The Compact. "Back in a minute," he promised, heading inside the bank alone.

"This is too easy," Wendy complained.

Steph turned around in her seat. "Say what?"

"Think about it. We got away from the killer schoolgirls way too easily, and I'm pretty sure our airport stunt made the evening news. Not to mention Talia knows where Jason's money is kept."

She frowned. The relative ease of their escape had crossed her mind as well, but she had never allowed herself to be as pessimistic as Wendy. "And your point is?"

"My point is she probably knows by now that we came here." She pointed to a car on the opposite side of the street. "And I'm pretty damn sure I saw that car when we were out earlier today. I think we're being watched. We should get out of here."

"And you didn't mention it _before_ Jason went into the bank alone?"

"Didn't seem important then."

Stephanie's eyes flashed with anger. "Were you trying to get me to ditch him just now?"

Wendy glared right back at her. "The only reason you went to him in the first place was to find out where this Scarlet chick is. He told us, so let's go already."

"In case you forgot, we kind of need him to _get there_." She faced the windshield and squeezed hard on the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. "And I wouldn't leave him behind even if we didn't."

"Oh, right, I forgot. The psycho killer is your best friend now."

"He's not—what's your defect, Wendy?"

"My _problem_ is that you've been acting like a completely different Stephanie Brown ever since Firewall blew up!" She jabbed a finger at her. "Seeking out a known criminal is bad enough, but now you're turning a blind eye to everything he does."

"We've had this argument already."

"Yeah, and you still don't get it. You might think you're getting help from him but he's just using you. People like that don't help others unless there's something in it for them."

"Oh, pick a different cliché." She whipped around to face her again. "You don't know Jason. You hadn't even met him before yesterday."

"Yeah, and this is what, your second date with him?" At her shocked expression she continued: "That's right, I know you two are screwing! I saw you sneak off together on the plane ride and I figured it out!"

Her nostrils flared, but she still tried to wrestle the cat back into the bag. "Where's your proof?"

"'Hold me up against the wall, Jason, we'll have more room that way!'" Wendy mocked in a high-pitched voice while wrapping her arms around herself and swaying. "Busted by the directional mic!"

"Okay, so what? We're both adults!"

"Yeah, I'm sure." Her lips twisted into a cruel sneer. "At least now I know why you're overlooking what a godawful person he is. Does he tell you how many people he's killed before he sticks it in you?"

Stephanie's fist impacted against her nose before she even realized what she was doing. She reeled back in horror. "Wendy, I'm sorry! I didn't mean—"

Wendy popped her nose back into place with a sickening crunch. "Oh, it is _on_ , Barbie Girl!" She lunged forward to try and choke her.

Then the door of the bank exploded.

* * *

" _Why did you choose Stephanie for the St. Hadrian's mission, Bruce?" Oracle asked, challenging him to find an answer that would not make her erupt like a volcano. "Why not send one of your other batkids?"_

" _St. Hadrian's was an all girls school, and Stephanie was the daughter of a supervillain who wasn't associated with the Wayne family in the public eye. She was ideally suited for a mission like that."_

_Barbara rolled her eyes. "Really?_ That's _your answer? Cassandra meets that description too, you know."_

" _I need her in Hong Kong for the time being," he said. "And as good of a fighter as Cassandra is, Stephanie is better at making interpersonal connections. She could fit into that environment and get information more easily."_

" _You've needed Cass in Hong Kong for over a year now," she pointed out. "Why haven't you invited her to come back home?"_

_Bruce frowned. "I have. She didn't want to."_

" _Really? Why?"_

" _Because Stephanie needed to be Batgirl if she was going to get her second chance. And there wasn't room for two of them in Gotham."_

" _There seems to be room for two Bat_ men _," she retorted. "Besides, neither one of them is Batgirl anymore."_

_Bruce just glared._

" _And on top of all that, you're honestly going to try and tell me you picked her for the mission because of her skill set? Not because you're proud of everything she's accomplished as Batgirl?"_

" _I thought that went without saying."_

" _Well you should try_ saying _it once in a while!"_

_The fury in her voice briefly accomplished the impossible. It caused the stone mask on Bruce Wayne's face to crack as if under a sledgehammer, and for a moment it looked as though she had actually surprised him. Barbara did not remark upon this rare occurrence, however. She was far too angry to notice._

" _You just admitted that she's not part of your family, and she never has been,_ has _she?" Oracle continued, smashing past the barriers that had taken him a lifetime to build with the sheer force of her anger. "She's just a tool for you to exploit when you have a use for her, then you throw her back in the toolbox when you're done! That's all_ any _of us are to you!"_

_She had said the words before, in various forms, whenever they had their little blowouts like this. But never had she meant them as firmly as she did in that moment. It was the moment she took all the pressure that had been building up ever since "The Incident"—anger that had been exacerbated by every time he had acted in his own interests; every time he had pushed them away; every time something happened that resulted in another one of their fights—and let every last drop of it out._

_And Batman came the closest he ever got to looking intimidated._

" _Barbara..."  
_

" _You wanna know why she left the country? It's because you've driven that poor girl away so many times she probably just wanted to beat you to the punch!"_

_He was silent for several moments while she breathed heavily with rage. During that time, the unfeeling mask slowly rebuilt itself before her eyes. "I chose her for the mission because I knew she was the only one who could do it," he said finally. "And she exceeded my expectations."_

" _Screw your expectations! She's not some cadet who needs to be graded! She's a_ person _and she looks up to you! Maybe if you acted like a_ father _instead of a general you'd see that!"_

_Batman quirked an eyebrow. "Are we still talking about Stephanie?"_

_She did not answer that right away._

* * *

Jason had just closed his fingers around the briefcase when the entrance of the entrance of the bank exploded inward, showering the lobby with debris and an impenetrable cloud of concrete dust. He recovered his senses just in time to spot movement in the dust cloud, then reached into one of the holsters on the back of his waist.

"Don't worry everybody; I won't be staying long!" he shouted to the patrons before taking a deep breath and diving into the dust cloud. He fired at the first silhouette he saw, scoring a direct hit to the forehead and sending the attacker to the ground. Another one got close to him and slashed at him with a sword, but he easily ducked under the swipe, then countered by smashing the briefcase into the assailant's face to stun her. He put the gun right underneath her chin and fired.

Making a beeline for the gaping crater where the door used to be, he exited the dust cloud and headed straight for The Compact. He tossed the briefcase through the open window, then grabbed the roof and pushed his legs through the opening without ever opening the door.

"Drive!" he ordered, slamming his hand on the windowsill for emphasis. Steph was already in the process of flooring it.

"You realize this isn't the General Lee, right?" He was too focused on surviving to chuckle even though he got the reference. "Activating Battle Mode."

_Chunk-Cronk-Choonk-Kachunk_

The Compact extended a number of hidden panels to effectively transform itself into a tank, complete with a rotating turret on top, armor plates on the sides, and the bitchingest set of headlights this side of a Ferrari convention.

"But it is, apparently, a Transformer."

"Plenty of time to talk when our enemies aren't trying to blow us into scrap metal." He glanced out the corner of his eye with a quizzical expression. She seemed strangely focused compared to her usual carefree approach to danger. Was that a good sign or a bad one? "We're not dealing with the rabid ones anymore. These are the Elites."

"Didn't you kick all their asses, though?" asked Wendy.

"They're a little more intimidating with rocket launchers!" She took the next turn hard, and he nearly slammed his head against the window. "Jason, man the turret!"

"Aye aye, Cap'n." He grabbed hold of the controls. The turret came with a top-mounted camera, which he used to sight his targets. There was one girl on the rooftop to their right, and he got his first good look at what their attackers were wearing.

The Death Girls had graduated from the _Harry Potter_ chic and were clad in yellow robes, with pale white skull masks over their faces. He pulled the trigger and the turret fired several high speed beanbags, which slammed into the girl with the speed of a world record fastball. He had figured that anything driven by a Bat would have nonlethal ammo, but he never expected it to fit Steph's oddball tactical choices so well.

"Enjoy the bruises!" he hollered, not caring if she heard him or not. He lined up another one in his sights and dropped her as well. She tumbled off the roof and into the path of the SUV driven by the other crewmembers, who ran her over without mercy and sent her ragdolling over the roof and onto the sidewalk. He saw Stephanie frown before she took a hard left at the next street.

By this time the Death Girls were pulling up in vehicles of their own, open top jeeps that provided minimal protection but gave them a wide range of fire, specifically from a SIG SG-553 assault rifle that they sure as hell had not gotten selling girl scout cookies. The armor plating on The Compact protected it from anything short of a direct hit from an anti-tank shell, but the SUV was only rated against small handgun rounds. The windows held against the initial burst, but the second shattered it to pieces, leaving the men inside exposed and outgunned.

Steph noticed this and slammed on the brakes, interposing the Compact between the two vehicles while Jason worked on angling the turret down enough to hit the shooter. He missed the gunner but hit the driver in the back of the head, distracting her just long enough for her to barrel into an oncoming truck, sending the shooter flying.

Another jeep pulled up behind them, only this one held a mounted machine gun using 7.62mm rounds that tore the tailgate of the black SUV to shreds. The men inside tried to fire back with AK-47s, but the first man to poke his head out the skylight got it blown off.

The three vehicles screamed around the next corner at dangerously illegal speeds, attracting the attention of a pair of police cruisers, who took off in hot pursuit. This drew fire off of the SUV for a moment as the gunner turned around to deal with the cops, ventilating their hoods and windshields with machine gun fire. They were forced to give up the chase, but more cruisers joined them at the next intersection.

Jason turned his beanbag cannon on the machine-gunner, who ducked while the driver swerved out of the way, ramping off a concrete bench and flipping over before slamming onto the roof of one of the pursuing squad cars. Two more jeeps took its place.

"Okay, this is getting ridiculous!" Jason shouted as he tried to figure out which target to prioritize. One was carrying a shotgun and was currently blowing holes in the side of the SUV, whose remaining shooter was firing back with the ferocity of a rabid badger, and he eventually scored a direct hit to her face before being taken out himself in the reflexive trigger pull. He smirked. As dumb as his minions tended to be, at least they were stubborn enough to go out fighting.

Since that one was covered, he turned his attention to the one on the left, sending a barrage of beanbags her way. The girl responded by pulling out an RPG, which she leveled at the Compact.

"Oh crap!" screamed Steph.

"Get out of the way!" Wendy yelled.

In the instant before the rocket fired, the driver of the black SUV moved his vehicle in between them, then exploded in a gigantic fireball.

* * *

The sun was setting by the time Nick finished interviewing the rest of Jordanna's professors and classmates. None of them gave him more than Francisco was able to, so he decided to leave and pursue leads elsewhere. Maybe stop by and talk to her father next.

He reached the parking lot and walked toward his car. This case was raising more questions than answers, but at least that meant that it was moving forward. If Stephanie had a bad relationship with this girl, would that really have been enough to kill her? Had she unknowingly taken some of those drugs herself? He wanted to find something that proved her innocence, but the evidence kept pointing back to her.

He sighed and placed his key in the door of his car. Before he could turn it, he caught a flash of sun reflecting off metal in his peripheral vision.

"Whoa!" He hopped back just in time to avoid having his skull bisected. He drew his pistol and pointed it at the attacker, yet another crazed schoolgirl. "On the ground, now!"

She ignored him, swinging the sword again. He squeezed off a shot, but she was no longer in his line of fire by the time he pulled the trigger, and he hit the window of a nearby car instead. The alarm went off, as did that of every other car in the parking lot.

That would get somebody's attention at least, but it would also bring unsuspecting college students directly into a dangerous situation. He had to end this quickly.

Sidestepping another swipe, he grabbed her wrist and folded her arm behind her back, elbowing the back of her skull and sending her to the ground. He kicked the sword away, then planted a foot on her back and pointed the gun at her head. "Stay down!"

He only got to enjoy his victory for a moment before five more schoolgirls surrounded him.

"Crap."

They charged forward and he raised his gun to start shooting, but three of them dropped before he could even pull the trigger. He saw a small metal disc ricochet off of one of their heads and hit the asphalt, and then a human-sized red blur descended from the sky and toppled the other two attackers.

"You look like you could use some help," Red Robin observed as the first three got up again.

"I wouldn't be opposed to it."

"I've got them; keep her covered," the vigilante ordered, gesturing to the assassin on whom he was standing.

Nick nodded, and Red Robin dove back into the fray, tossing a telescoping staff at two of the schoolgirls, which stunned them and caused them to stumble backward. He turned around, dropping to the ground and using the staff to launch himself, landing twin kicks to their faces. As soon as he landed on his feet he drove the staff into the third girl's stomach, causing her to double over. He finished her by elbowing the base of her skull, sending her to the ground. She did not get up.

The two girls behind him rose and headed straight for the cowled superhero, who casually swept the first one off her feet, then arced the staff down hard at her gut, causing her to slam into the asphalt. The second one drew her sword and swung it, but he parried almost dismissively, following up with a kick to the stomach that sent her flying back into Nick's car.

He had to fight the urge to gawk at the display before him. He had seen Batgirl in action and she was _very_ well trained, but Red Robin's fighting style seemed... smoother somehow. More fluid; more experienced—and more casually powerful. He had clearly been doing this longer.

The remaining two assailants did the smart thing and double-teamed him, one swinging high and the other low. He hopped over the low swing and blocked the one aiming for his neck, striking out with a side kick to the girl who had gone for his ankles. She stumbled back while he finished off the other one with a crippling blow to her kneecap.

She raised the sword over her head and charged with wild abandon, which made it that much easier to break her hand and get her to release the blade, then drop her with a high kick to the face. Her nose shattered and the blood traced an arc all the way to the ground, where she was knocked out cold.

Red Robin reached into a pocket on his utility belt and produced an aerosol can, moving among the girls and spraying it in their faces. Those who were not already unconscious slipped into a deep sleep, and their cries quieted. He kept the one that Detective Gage had taken out first awake.

"Okay," he told her in a low, menacing voice. "You can either give us the information right now and spend a few nights in jail, or you'll give it to us eventually and spend a few weeks in the hospital."

"We... are... dead," she managed to choke out before he eased the pressure of his foot on her back. "Hail Leviathan."

"Is that all they know how to say?"

"They're on an unusually high dose of mind control drugs," Red Robin told him, spraying the knockout gas in the girl's face. "Way more than Leviathan's other agents around the world. We won't get a straight answer out of them until they detox or we find an antidote."

He stepped off of her as soon as she went limp. "Where are they all coming from if that school was shut down, anyway?"

"These are all underclasswomen," he explained. "Not their Elite. According to Batgirl's report, those ones were more coherent. This is just a hypothesis, but I'm guessing after the school got shut down they pumped all the ones who hadn't signed up to be Death Girls full of enough mind control drugs to make them go feral, then set them loose. They're under control, but just barely."

"Speaking of Batgirl," he said, ejecting the SD card from his recording device and handing it to him, "you'll want to listen to this."

Red Robin nodded, inserting the card into a compartment on one of his gauntlets, then pressed a few buttons. After a couple moments, he handed it back. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. I figure with this target on my back I'm better off giving that to you now than doing a fatal phone call later."

"You're under our protection now," the vigilante reassured him. "You won't see us, but we're watching. Keep up the investigation like you normally would."

He nodded. "Thanks."

Red Robin smirked. "Don't mention it." Aiming a grapple at the nearest building, he zipped off into the night.

* * *

" _Barbara, I know we've had our differences in the past, but now is not the time to be arguing amongst ourselves."_

" _Look," she interrupted, brushing off his attempt to change the subject, "you told me at the start of this conversation that I've gotten to know Stephanie better than anybody. Well let me tell you what I've learned, Bruce. I know that in spite of everything we've put her through, every time we tried to push her away for her own safety, every time we came down on her and told her to stop, she refused to give up. She was born to be a hero, no matter what any of us had to say about it."_

_She deepened her glare at him. "When Tim's father forced him to stop being Robin, she made a costume and marched straight into the Batcave. Remember that, Bruce? Remember how you made her your sidekick even after all the times you tried to push her away?"_

_Batman was silent._

" _And then, seventy-one days later, you fired her. Remind me why you did that again."_

_He waited for several moments before answering. "When I brought her on as Robin, I gave her one rule." He raised a finger. "If she disobeyed my orders, even once, she was gone. She did, so I let her go."_

_Oracle chuckled darkly. "You know, I never could figure out why you did that. You didn't give Dick that rule. You didn't tell Tim to hang up his cape even when he threw it in your face. What could_ possibly _inspire you to invent such a draconian policy, just for her?"_

" _Barbara..."  
_

" _I'll tell you why," she continued. "It's because Tim didn't remind you of_ Jason. _"_

* * *

"Knew I should have just arranged a drop," Jason muttered half to himself as the explosion consumed the rear view mirror. "We need to lose these assholes."

"Couldn't agree more," said Steph as she flipped open a control panel that gave her a variety of options for losing pursuers. She selected the oil slick, which reached the fire that was already burning and lit up the highway in a blazing wall of fire that forced the Death Girls and the cops to stop cold. Steph turned sharply down an alley, making her way to a parking structure where they could wait out the heat before returning to the airport.

"You got the money, right?" asked Wendy.

"All seven hundred fifty million of it," he replied, holding up the briefcase. "And now we have fewer people to divide it between."

She huffed. "How can you be so casual about this? Your crew just gave their lives protecting us, and all you can think about is how you won't have to pay them out? You should be sending that money to their families, you insensitive—"

"Don't mistake my calmness for apathy," he interrupted. "And those guys didn't really have families, none that cared about them at least. They understood the risks when they got into this life."

"Whatever," she said. "It's not like I really cared about them anyway, but not all of us can be so blasé about death. Honestly, I'd be surprised that _I'm_ the one who has to chew your head off over this if your little fuckbuddy over here hadn't been ignoring every criminal thing you've done since we somehow fell in with you."

"Hey, you guys came to me for help," he reminded her. "And how did you know we were sleeping together?"

"I can solve mysteries too, you know."

"Both of you shut up," said Steph. "You're right, Wendy; Jason can be a little uncaring when it comes to lowlifes getting killed. And maybe I haven't found it in me to be as concerned about that as much as I should. But we all have the same group of people after us and if we argue among ourselves like this then Talia's already won."

"I've been thinking about that," said Jason. "I get why Talia has a vendetta against you, but I thought she and I were on the same page after everything she did when I came back to life. She gave me money, gave me access to high end training, and kept me up to date on Batman. But I'm starting to get the feeling that she has something against me too."

"Maybe she's just jealous," suggested Wendy.

"Okay, there is _no way_ you knew that I slept with Talia that one time," he said, turning around. "I hadn't even told Steph about it."

"Ew, no, I _didn't_ know that!" she replied. "I meant the fact that you're partnering up with her enemies."

"Wait, you slept with Talia?" asked Steph as they finally arrived at the parking garage, where The Compact shifted back into a normal-looking vehicle. "And it never occurred to you to make a 'your Mom' joke to Damian?"

"I'm not _that_ crude," said Jason. "Give me some credit." He paused, then finally admitted: "It may have crossed my mind a couple times."

Stephanie giggled.

"Okay, let me out of this fucking thing," Wendy demanded, reaching for her wheelchair. She set it on the ground and rolled off to another corner of the garage. "Let me know when we get to Russia."

* * *

Tim sat in front of his private system in the Bat Bunker under Wayne Tower, reviewing the interview tape Detective Gage had given him. He technically did have his own headquarters now, but he really had not used it that much and this was closer anyway. Though he had doffed his cowl, he kept the costume on in case he had to dart out to protect the detective again. So far, the program tracking his movements through various traffic and building cameras had not reported any more attempts on his life.

He was currently researching the identity of Jordanna's late mother, Stacy Spence. As Francisco had said, she had been one of the victims of White Knight's murder spree a few months back, and apparently the _only_ victim in her immediate family, which made him curious. Confirming Jordanna and her father's whereabouts at the time told him they had been out with friends and at work, respectively. White Knight had not waited for them to come home to commence his grisly ritual, which was another red flag. Whomever she was related to, they definitely were not your average mob boss.

Stacy's newly winged body had been discovered alone in the foyer of her home by Jordanna, who had moved back home for winter break and promptly called the police. Batman and Robin had been too busy tracking down the other victims to bother with that particular case, so all he had to go on was the official police report. It was not as enlightening as he had hoped.

The signature roar of the Batmobile heralded Batman and Robin's return to the bunker. Good. He could use their expertise, since they had been the ones to close the White Knight case. Even if it meant dealing with Damian.

Right on cue, the little devil stalked up behind him and began scowling at the back of Tim's head as though it would somehow cause his hair to burst into flame.

"I thought you were running off to find Batgirl."

"I'm also trying to prove her innocence." He directed his attention to the screen. "Right now I'm investigating the murder victim, Jordanna Spence."

"Or more specifically, her mother," Damian noted, stepping closer to get a better look. "And what's White Knight got to do with it?"

"Jordanna's mother was one of the 'angels' he created," Tim explained. "I'm trying to find out which supervillain she was related to that would have led him to do that."

"How's it going so far?" asked Dick, walking up to the computer as well.

"Well, I found something interesting." He pointed to a search he had going on one of the screens. "Stacy Spence was her married name, but she had it legally changed to Smith years before she even met her husband. Like she was trying to hide who she was related to."

"And who was that?"

"Still trying to find out," he said. "I have the search running in the background while I work on locating Batgirl."

Dick nodded. "Any luck?"

He shook his head. "None. Steph was always good at hiding when she didn't want to be found, and she's only gotten better."

Damian scoffed. "Or maybe you're just not a very good detective."

"Hey, Tim's the best info gatherer short of Oracle," Batman defended. "And he's better at deductive reasoning than me or even Bruce. He's an amazing detective."

Tim's heart swelled a bit as Dick stood up for him, and he smirked as the little brat's face scrunched up like he had swallowed a lemon.

"I'm still better."

"If you say so." The acrobat chuckled. "But trust me, Tim's our best chance at finding Batgirl."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence" He smiled faintly. "There's one thing I still don't get, though."

"What's that?"

"The St. Hadrian's girls. St. Hadrian's was in England, and Batgirl shut it down. Most of their Elite are still in custody, and the rest are in Leviathan bases all over the world. Why are they sending the undergrads to snuff out Batgirl and anyone investigating her?"

"Could be all they have left," Dick theorized. "It's not like they had any other agents in Gotham."

"Yeah, but there's any number of assassins Talia could send." He frowned. "And she _knows_ Steph's a threat after the ass-kicking she handed those girls when she shut down the school, so why send doped up schoolgirls that wouldn't even be a match for her on her worst day?"

Damian's eyes went wide with realization. "Oh, you clever woman."

Dick and Tim looked at him. "What?"

"She was never trying to kill her," he explained. "My mother knew that with all of us wrapped up in stopping Dr. Dedalus, Jason Todd was the closest thing Brown had to an ally. The girls weren't meant to assassinate her; they were intended to smoke her out."

"To what end?" asked Dick. "And how did she know that they knew each other when _we_ didn't know?"

"Why don't we ask the World's Third Greatest Detective?"

He rolled his eyes, but before he could reply the computer dinged behind him. "Search results came back."

"Let me see," said Dick, leaning in. His eyes widened and drew in a shorter breath than usual. Tim's heart skipped a beat. Damian stared at both of them with a befuddled expression.

"What? What's happening?"

"That's how Jordanna got accepted into St. Hadrian's," Tim realized. "She was his niece."

"Whose niece? Do either of you cretins want to fill me in?"

"It makes sense. And it explains why her mother was targeted by White Knight. But it also means..."

"Yeah, I know." He sighed. "It means Steph had a reason to hate her if she figured it out."

"Figured _what_ out?" Damian shouted, stomping his foot petulantly.

Tim could have kept going, but he did not feel like teasing him anymore. "Before she legally changed it, Jordanna's mother had a very unfortunate last name," he revealed. "Sionis."

"As in...?" He started tracing a little circle with his hand.

"As in Roman Sionis." Bowing his head, he spoke the name he had hoped never to hear again.

"Black Mask."

* * *

_She saw his nostrils flare, and then he was deathly quiet. That glare used to make her feel ten inches tall, but not anymore. Not when she was this angry._

" _It's not about—"_

" _It's_ always _been about Jason!" she snapped. "And let's face facts: she was just as reckless, just as stubborn, and when something_ really _affected her personally, she got just as angry as Jason ever did._ That's _why you didn't want her disobeying you. Because even though_ every _Robin eventually goes against your orders, she reminded you too much of the one who did it and got himself killed."_

_She jabbed a finger at him. "You fired her because you didn't want her death on your conscience. And I can understand that; I can. I tried it with Black Canary once. But you want to know the difference, Batman? I_ told _Dinah why I was firing her. I told her that I couldn't bear the thought of burying another friend. But you pushed Stephanie away and never told her why. You made her feel like she wasn't good enough."_

" _I got it anyway." He scowled. "She accidentally started the gang war because she wanted to prove herself. Even though she survived, I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for what I put her through. But that's for me to deal with, not her."_

_Oracle sighed, and some of the anger left with it. "Bruce, it's not about you this time. It's about Stephanie and what_ she _feels. If you'd been honest with her, if you'd let her share your burden... if you let_ all _of us do that, she wouldn't have run away with Jason."_

_She began wheeling herself towards the SUV. "She ran away after what happened because she doesn't feel welcome here, regardless of whether she did or didn't kill somebody. Maybe it's time you examined why that is."_

_He did not reply to her as she pulled herself into the driver's seat._

" _And to answer your question? Yes. I do think she could have killed somebody. But that doesn't mean she's not one of us anymore. As far as I'm concerned, she's still family, Bruce. And I'm bringing her home."_

_She drove off before he could respond._

* * *

As soon as they were at a safe altitude, Jason ventured over to one of the long benches, where Stephanie sat with a sewing needle, a unitard and several yards of eggplant fabric. He plopped down next to her.

"Back to Spoiler, huh?"

She nodded. "They didn't have enough black fabric for a full face mask, but I've kinda gotten used to wearing my hair out."

"Nice haircut, by the way," he added. "Sorry I didn't notice it before."

"It's okay. Things got a little hectic back there." She continued stitching two pieces together. "It'll definitely make it easier to fit inside the hood."

She sighed and looked down. "And with all that's happened lately, I can't go back to being Batgirl. I don't wanna tarnish the name."

"And why would you tarnish it?"

"You mean _aside_ from the fact that I helped hijack a plane to flee the country with a wanted felon?"

He smirked and leaned closer. "Yeah, besides that." He frowned slightly. "Does this have anything to do with why you were ripping off _Macbeth_ in the bathroom last night?"

"I wasn't _ripping it off_. If anything it was an unintentional homage." She stared across the bay at The Compact. Away from him. "And yeah, sorta."

"I knew it." He leaned back. "You've got blood on your hands."

Stephanie chuckled darkly. "I told you before: killing is the one line you can't cross and still wear a bat on your chest."

He nodded grimly. "Details?"

"One of the St. Hadrian's girls." She looked down hopelessly. "I actually knew her from Gotham U before that. We had a few of the same classes. And she was always a total bitch to me, but I did my best to try and get along with her."

She closed her eyes. "She was wacked out of her head on those mind control drugs, so I don't think she _wanted_ to kick open our door and slash my Mom across the chest, but... you remember how you told me you can't remember whether Felipe fell or if you pushed him?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I'm not so lucky," she explained quietly. "She came after me next, and before I knew what I was doing I took the sword from her and stabbed her right through the gut." Steph frowned. "I killed her."

Jason shrugged. "You realize that's called self-defense, right? She wasn't exactly planning on giving you a massage."

She nodded. "Yeah. And I wasn't so worried about the police finding out as..." She turned to look him in the eyes. "Do you know why Batman fired me?"

"Because you're a loose cannon that doesn't play by anybody's rules?"

She chuckled, but the levity soon faded from her expression and she continued.

"Well, the official reason he let me go was because I disobeyed a direct order. He was fighting an assassin that was killing anybody who remotely looked like Tim, because she'd been hired to take out Robin. He tried to take her on alone and told me to stay put. But Batman was losing against her, so like the brave girl wonder I was I came to his rescue." She huffed. "Lotta good that did me."

"Doesn't sound fair."

"Yeah, tell me about it. But I don't think it was the whole reason." She looked over to the other end of the cargo bay as if scanning some invisible horizon, and began her story.

"One of the last cases we worked together as Batman and Robin, we went after Victor Zsasz. He was on another one of his murder sprees and he was targeting subway passengers. We thought we'd tracked him down, but he got the drop on us and dragged me off."

He was almost successful in hiding his reaction to that. They both had issues when it came to being nabbed by the worst of Batman's rogues.

"Luckily, Batman had me wearing upgraded armor, so he wasn't able to slash my throat," she continued. "He caught up with us and Zsasz almost beat him."

As loath as he was to admit it, Jason knew that Zsasz was one of the deadliest serial killers in Gotham, and he was skilled enough to get the upper hand over any of them if they were not careful. That Stephanie had survived her encounter with him spoke volumes about her tenacity.

"So I did what any self-respecting sidekick would do and hopped on Zsasz's back and tugged on his nose," Stephanie added. "Fortunately for him, Batman had already broken it so the cartilage didn't splinter into his brain and kill him." She glared at a random section of the floor. "But that didn't stop Batman from lecturing me about it later."

"Let me guess; he gave you the 'no killing' speech?"

"Yeah. Even though I _totally_ saved his life, he got caught up on the fact that I tried to kill Zsasz to do it. Even though Zsasz killed two people that night alone."

She set down the fabric and crossed her arms, leaning her head against the hull of the plane. "That wasn't the exact moment he banished me from the kingdom, but that's where I think it started." Bitter laughter shook her. "If I'm being completely honest, I think he fired me because I sounded too much like _you_."

Jason had to chuckle at that.

"Batman told me that there are always other options for ending a confrontation than killing, and since my angry little girl brain _obviously_ couldn't look for them, I couldn't be his partner anymore."

"Sometimes there isn't one."

"Yeah, well in this case there were. I knew a hundred ways to disarm her, incapacitate her, knock her out, you name it." She closed her eyes. "And I chose to ignore every last one of them."

He frowned sympathetically. "Because she tried to kill your mom?"

Steph sighed and nodded. "It's just... I didn't have the easiest relationship with my parents growing up. But with everything that's happened in my life, my mom's been with me through all of it. And when I thought that I'd lost her... something inside of me just snapped. I lost control of myself. I broke another promise."

A tear rolled down her cheek, and she smiled painfully. "Not bad for a supervillain origin, huh?"

He laughed. "Not quite as dramatic as mine, but you killed for a better reason than a lot of people have." He grinned supportively. "And don't worry. It gets easier."

"That's the problem, though," she said. "It _was_ easy. Too easy. Back when I was Spoiler, even when I was Robin, I had this... this _anger_ inside of me, right below the surface. I managed to hide it pretty well with my bubbly charm, but it was there. After spending a year in Africa and all that time being Batgirl I thought I'd moved past it, but I surrendered to it and it was the easiest thing in the world to do." She glanced nervously at him. "And that's what scares me."

Jason clapped a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, you just killed one person, and you did it because she was trying to kill you. You've got a long way to go if you're gonna get anywhere close to what I've done."

"That's the real reason I came to you," she revealed. "You're the one person I know who could possibly understand where I'm coming from."

The tears returned. "And it's also why I can't be Batgirl anymore. Wearing that suit after what I've done would just dishonor everything Babs and Cass stand for." She picked up the fabric at her feet. "But nobody ever really trusted Spoiler. It's the one secret identity that's always been mine. And it's the one thing nobody can ever take away from me."

She sniffled and wiped her eyes clean. "I had my second chance and I blew it. Nobody gets a third."

"Hey, at least you _got_ a second chance," he told her. "I threw mine away."

"I know."

Stephanie began sewing again. Jason did not probe any further. She had already told him everything he needed to know.

And after the last three days, they had earned a little quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anybody with a passing familiarity of comics fandom has at least heard of the term Superdickery. During the Silver Age, comics publishers would publish misleading covers of the book's lead doing something wildly out of character, which was explained in the contents of the issue itself to be nothing more than the result of mind control, body-swapping, or even just a lack of context. The Superman books often depicted the title character acting like a colossal dick to his friends, hence the term. It was little more than a ploy to get readers to buy the book, and it often worked.
> 
> The thing is, it didn't stop with the Silver Age. They don't often go for the cover gags any more, but the concept has been updated into The Hoax. A good example of this is the end of the first issue of Batman in the New 52, where (spoiler alert), a murder victim is found to have Dick Grayson's DNA under his fingernails. It's revealed in literally the next issue that the guy had grabbed onto Dick to issue a warning a few days before he was murdered, so it turns out to have been a red herring. Comics writers will make it look like the characters are doing something that they've never done before, except for all those other times where they did it and then the story backpedaled at the last minute and showed us what was really going on.
> 
> I didn't want to do that here. If I was going to have Stephanie cross the line and kill somebody, then damn it, she was going to actually kill somebody. I do feel bad about poor Jordanna, but I don't feel like it's fridging because her death doesn't fuel manpain. I hope I made it abundantly clear in this chapter exactly what Steph's reasons for killing were and that I'm not going to ignore the consequences of it.
> 
> That's all for now. Let me know what you think!


	5. Interlude 1: Playing Hero

A cloud of dust billowed on a road that cut through the African landscape, following a rugged looking SUV that had its windows rolled down for want of air conditioning. The driver was an older woman with silver hair, wearing what amounted to a white coat this far into the dusty reaches of the Savannah. The other was not yet an adult, blonde and fair and no longer worried about a sunburn after her first five. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail to keep it from sticking to the sweat on her neck. She let the breeze wick away the moisture and welcomed the brief chill that accompanied it.

Several meters ahead were two trucks, positioned in the form of a roadblock. The driver of the SUV had no choice but to slow to a stop and allow one of the khaki clad men with a large hunting rifle swagger confidently up to the driver's side window on the right of the vehicle.

"Hello, ladies," he greeted with an ugly sneer and a heavy German accent. "Where are you headed?"

"A medical camp five miles up the road," the driver answered. "We're going there to deliver vaccines."

"It would help if your _truck_ wasn't in the way," the blonde passenger snapped.

The man glanced at the boxes of medicine in the back of the SUV. "You know, medicine sells for a lot this far away from the cities. I'm sure if you wanted to you could find a buyer willing to pay much more zan some villagers. Only thing they do is take it."

"That's kind of the idea," the silver-haired woman replied. "My name is Doctor Leslie Thompkins. I'm here to help end the spread of tuberculosis among the villages. And I would appreciate it very much if you and your men would move out of the way."

The man laughed. "You seem to be under the impression that I will let you pass without paying ze toll. And I have plenty of buyers who will pay a lot for that medicine you're carrying."

The blonde spotted several animal carcasses in the back of one of the trucks, as well as five additional men carrying large rifles. She scowled. "So you've moved on from poaching the local wildlife to highway robbery? Are you trying to set a record for most evil hunter clichés?"

He tilted his head back and let loose a long, riotous laugh. "Quite a mouth on zis one. Hey Jenkins!" He waved over to one of the men, who came up to the passenger's side door. "How much you figure we could sell _her_ for?"

She could feel his lecherous stare creeping over every inch of her body, and she glared right back.

"Common whore like her? Two or three grand, easy."

She was not sure what to be offended by: that they were considering selling her or that they believed she would go for that little.

"Why don't you step on outta the car, Missy?"

He gripped the handle of the door and started to pull when she shoved it open and knocked Jenkins flat on his back. The first man shoved his rifle through the window to try and shoot her, but she was already moving, grabbing the railing on top of the SUV and using it to propel herself into a flip, vaulting over the vehicle and landing boot-first on his head.

The gun went off, tearing a hole in the roof and nearly deafening Leslie, who covered her ears just in time to avoid having her eardrums burst. The man hit the ground hard, and by this time the other two men had started to take aim at her, along with three others who had been sitting in the trucks. She blitzed forward to eliminate their range advantage, landing a flying kick on the first one's chest and sending him to the dirt.

The man on her right came at her with a rifle butt as soon as she landed, but she twisted around him and grabbed the back of his neck, dropping to the ground just in time to avoid a swipe from a machete and slamming his face into the dirt. The machete wielder changed angles and swung downward, but she intercepted him at his wrist as she rose, then grabbed his shoulder to stabilize herself before driving a knee into his groin.

He dropped the machete in a hurry and it clattered to the ground, where he soon landed next to it after she elbowed him in the base of his skull when he doubled over. Another man leveled his rifle at her, but she was already moving, grabbing the barrel and using it to pull herself closer, where she aimed a chop at his throat with just enough force to take his breath away without actually crushing his windpipe. She hooked a leg around his ankle and a hand around his throat, then drove him into the ground.

Sensing a man behind her, she backflipped over him and brought him down quickly with a reverse spinning roundhouse when she landed. One of the riskier moves in her arsenal, but it was effective, and he stumbled a few meters before finally keeling over.

Her luck changed when she turned around and caught a rifle butt to the bridge of her nose, which produced a sickening crunch. She fell to the dirt and tried to stand up, but two of the men held her arms down while another pair secured her legs. She mounted a valiant struggle for several moments before freezing solid when Jenkins came strolling up, twirling a knife.

"You know what? Maybe I'll just cut your belly open and watch your guts spill out for causin' so much trouble." His homegrown Tennessee accent bled through every word, and he licked the edge of the steel before crouching down in front of her. She screamed and thrashed on the ground, trying to break free. She managed to break the nose of the man who had broken hers with a well-aimed kick, but another moved in to replace him and secured her foot. He crouched down in front of her and raised the knife high above his head.

Before he could bring it back down again, a savage cry sounded from behind them and within seconds blood began to spray from the would-be murderer's throat. He fell to the ground clutching his jugular, and the men released the blonde to try and locate this new threat.

A flash of steel was all the warning the second man got before he suffered the same fate as Jenkins, trying hopelessly to keep the blood from escaping his neck. The rest of the men saw it this time, as did the blonde. And what she saw was enough to warrant a double-take.

The first thing she noticed was that the man was completely naked. He was white, with strawberry blond hair and three curved scars in the middle of his chest. His body was lean and _ripped_ , and she could see the individual muscles tensing—not that she was paying _that_ much attention, of course. He carried a knife in each hand, and his eyes told a story of bloody vengeance which the blades made reality.

"Kill him!" one of the remaining four hunters shouted, leveling his rifle. The man was upon him long before he could get the shot off, stabbing him below the sternum, then turning rapidly around and raking it across his chest, shredding his lungs. He fell, unconscious from the shock and bleeding fatally.

At this point the three remaining men had surrendered to panic, which the feral avenger used to his advantage. He was a force of nature; a whirling dervish of steel and death that moved too quickly for them to touch. He ducked under the rifle of one of the men, stabbing him in the thigh and sliding the knife all the way down his femoral artery.

The machete-wielder raised it over his head to strike, but the man was quicker, stabbing him in the wrist with the knife in his right hand before yanking it out and executing a three-quarter spin, sinking the knife in his left hand between the second and third ribs, directly into his heart. He continued his rotation, hurling the right knife into the remaining attacker's gut.

He pounced on the final man, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest, throat, and... other extremities before finally stomping on his neck to crush his windpipe. She stood up, uncertain if he would choose to go after her next.

"Hey!"

They both turned around to face the man she had forgotten about, who had awoken from his blackout and was currently holding an antique German pistol to Leslie's head.

"Neither of you come any closer or ze old lady dies!" He had clearly lost it. Taking a hostage in a city was one thing, because there were always places to hide and escape. But on the wide-open Savannah, there was nowhere to run.

Still, she could not take the chance that he would panic and blow off Leslie's head, so the blonde did nothing. The naked man, on the other hand, did not look so worried.

"This is between you and me, Reinhart," he said calmly, advancing steadily without fear. "You don't have to take a hostage. Where are you gonna go, anyway?"

The fact that he spoke with perfect clarity came as something of a shock after the savagery he had just displayed, but it reassured her that she was dealing with a rational human being. One who behaved ferociously in combat, but a man nonetheless.

"I am going take this truck full of medicine and drive into the nearest jungle, then kill zis bitch!" He pressed the gun harder against her temple. "You don't believe me, step closer!"

"You'll have to get the door of the truck open with both your hands full first. And besides, I don't think you have that much to bargain with."

" _Ja_?" His laughter was just shy of maniacal. "And why is that?"

He answered his question with another. "Do you know why the Nazis had such a hard time using the Luger pistol in the African Campaign during World War II?"

His face contorted into an expression that begged for an explanation. "No. Why?"

The man raised a knife and prepared to throw it.

"I'm warning you! I'll do it!"

The man stepped closer.

"I warned you! I _fucking_ warned you!" He pulled the trigger.

"No!" the blonde shouted, but Leslie's head did not explode. The gun did not even click.

A knife buried itself in Reinhart's shoulder and he dropped the Luger, howling in pain.

"It's because all the dust clogged up the pistol's moving parts." He continued approaching. "The British were using the revolver instead. Semi-autos tend to jam easily in the desert."

He smirked. "You've been in Africa a few weeks now and I'm betting you've never had to use that gun once. You should try cleaning it once in a while."

"Zis one still works!" the poacher shouted, picking up the rifle with the arm that had not been incapacitated and leveling it at him the best he could.

The man charged forward, but Reinhart was faster, squeezing off a lucky shot. The recoil separated his shoulder and made him lose his balance, but he winged the man on the very side of his abdomen, blowing out a small chunk of flesh. The location of the blow rendered the stopping power of the rifle moot, and if he felt it at all through the adrenaline, it was not apparent to either of the women as he tackled the poacher to the ground and stabbed him in the throat.

He stood up and looked down, apparently just noticing that he had been shot. He took a couple of steps forward, then collapsed to the ground, still conscious but not in any condition to flee.

Leslie sprang into action, turning him on his side so that no more dirt could enter the wound. "Stephanie, get the gauze!"

Stephanie obeyed, retrieving the gauze from the back of the SUV and bringing it over to the older woman. Her own wounds could wait, though she did catch a reflection of her mangled nose that she was pretty sure would require some resetting later.

As she applied the sterile fabric over the entry and exit wounds, Leslie continued talking to the man, who was now her patient. "I need you to stay with me," she explained, pressing the cloth into the wound to stem the bleeding. "It's a clean entry and exit so you should survive, but talking will help you stay conscious. I'm Leslie Thompkins, and this is Stephanie. What's your name?"

"Thomas." His voice was barely above a whisper. "Thomas Blake."

* * *

  
**Outlaws  
** Interlude 1: Playing Hero

* * *

They were already at the camp by the time Blake awoke. They had put him in a medical tent on a cot that was much too small, and his feet hung over the edge of it. He rubbed his head and tried to sit up, but his body forced him to lie down again, assisted by a pair of teenage hands.

"Whoa there, Tarzan," Stephanie said as she gently pushed him back down. "Leslie says you need to take it easy for the next few days. Give the flesh time to grow back."

"I'm fine," he insisted, though his grimace betrayed the truth.

"That's what they all say."

Thomas chuckled.

"Thanks for the rescue, by the way," the blonde continued, fiddling with the bag on his IV. "If it wasn't for you I'd be the one in that bed."

"Or a shallow grave."

"Hey, I had it mostly under control," she protested. "But I appreciate the assist nonetheless."

Her nose had been bandaged up, he noticed. Given that she had no trouble speaking to him, he surmised that the damage was not permanent.

"So what's your story?"

"Hm?" He blinked.

"Well it was awfully convenient that you were already there, and it seemed like you had business with those guys anyway," she explained. "What did they do to you that got you so pissed off?"

He glared straight ahead, but not at her. "They killed some of my lions."

"Come again?"

Blake raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean by _your_ lions?" she clarified. "Like, you own them or something?"

He shook his head. "I'm the leader of their Pride."

"And what happened to the old leader?"

He traced a hand over one of the scars on his chest. "He gave me these before I killed him," he explained. "Law of the wild mean that I took over as the leader."

Stephanie blinked. "I wasn't aware it worked like that, but what do I know about the laws of nature?"

He chuckled. "What about you?" he asked. "What brings you to Africa?"

"And here I would have thought the fact that we already had medical equipment with us would have been a dead giveaway," she said, picking up a clipboard and studying it.

"Ah." He nodded. "Relief workers?"

"Yeah. This area's been hit with a really bad strain of TB lately and we're helping give out vaccinations. We're at a free medical clinic for underprivileged villagers right now, the ones who are too far away from any major cities to get good medical care."

He had a few thoughts on that, but did not mention them.

"Anyway," she continued, setting down the clipboard and moving over to his bedside, "You really do need to rest. Lie down."

He did so without complaint. He was not so stubborn as to refuse to admit that he was hurt, even if the shot had only grazed him. Even so small a wound could eventually be fatal in this part of the world if allowed to fester.

"Leslie will be in to check up on you in a few hours," she informed him before stepping out of the tent.

Thomas sighed and closed his eyes, allowing himself to drift into unconsciousness again.

He dreamed of lions.

* * *

The sun was nearly below the horizon when the convoy encountered the bodies. The lead vehicle stopped, and a large, muscular man exited. Leather survival boots kicked up a small amount of dust, and the man, bearded and wrinkled by some forty years of hard living, looked at the scene before him with disdain.

Maximillian Reinhart had not reported in, and now he knew the reason why.

"Get this shit cleaned up," he said, his accent cold and American. "We're lucky we found 'em before the authorities."

The men behind him worked moved quickly to follow his orders, and he moved over to examine Reinhart's body.

"Looks like the poor bloke was... stabbed," the dark-skinned Englishman next to him noted. His Northern English accent made him easy to understand, unlike some of the incomprehensible Limeys he'd had the displeasure of working with before.

"Thank you for the observation, Marcus," the man replied with a faint sneer. "I wouldn't have guessed that, what with the giant knife sticking out of his neck and all."

"No, I mean... it's weird that he was done in by a stabbing when there's two guns lying in the dirt next to him," Marcus Beecham explained. "And look at those guys over there; they were all carrying when whoever had the knives dropped 'em like a bunch of rank amateurs."

"That's because they _were_ a bunch of rank amateurs," he pointed out. "But you're right, whoever did this was obviously skilled with blades." Removing his sunglasses, the man pinched the bridge of his nose. "At least tell me we have some idea why someone would come after them."

"Well, the lion pelts on the truck over there might be a clue," said Marcus. "There've been reports in this area about a wild man leading a Pride of lions and killing any poachers who come sniffing around."

" _That_ lunatic?" He released an aggravated sigh. "Crazy vigilantes with weird hang-ups are the reason I _left_ the States." He put the sunglasses back on. "Any idea where he might have gone?"

"No, but this is probably his blood." The Brit pointed to a small pool of the stuff that looked as though it had leaked out a little at a time as opposed to being violently expelled. "And those tire tracks aren't consistent with any of the other vehicles Reinhart and his men were using. We follow those, we find where he went."

"Get to it, then. You lead an advance squad out so we don't lose the trail. I'll make sure things get wrapped up here."

"You're sure you don't want to go yourself and let me monitor the cleanup?"

"When there's a mess this big I like to oversee things personally to make sure it doesn't come back to bite us. Besides, I hired you because you're the best tracker in the world, so I'd rather get my money's worth on this one."

"I'm hardly the best in the world, sir."

"Best I could get, then. I was trying to pay you a compliment, but I guess that went over your head. Now go find this asshole and put him out of his misery before the trail goes cold."

Beecham nodded. "Yes sir."

He pointed to four of the other men and made a twirling motion with his arm, and the five of them piled into a vehicle and drove off parallel to the tracks their quarry had left.

* * *

It wasn't conducive to his recovery to be out of bed this soon, but Thomas couldn't help himself. He was getting bored inside that tent, and that always led to introspection. He'd had enough of that already on this sojourn to Africa following his exile. Still, it had been some time since he was around people that he was not actively trying to murder, so it took him a moment to adjust to the crowd that occupied the camp.

This was not an ordinary refugee camp, nor a simple medical visit to a village. As Stephanie had said, the entire area had been hit with a nasty strain of Tuberculosis, and the doctors were here to vaccinate those who had not yet come down with it, as well as treat the ones who had. And from the look of things, they seemed to be doing a fine job of it.

They had given him pants, he noticed as he took a few more steps outside his tent. He was still without a shirt, but so were most of the people here, so it suited him just fine. He breathed in and continued exploring the camp.

He found Stephanie at the end of a long line, administering shots. A mother held her son's arm out for the needle, and while the boy flinched a little, the blonde worked with his mother to soothe him and rewarded him with a lollipop and a smile. Then she moved on to the next patient.

She loved it here, he realized, for an entirely different reason than he did. Thomas had come to Africa to get away from people, but Stephanie seemed at home around them, and not in that condescending way that the occasional celebrity with a camera crew did when they came rolling in to do a token endorsement and kiss a few babies. Stephanie genuinely seemed to love helping people.

That was what gave her away.

When he saw her fight, he had not been certain, but now that he saw the other side of her, the kind big sister with a heart great enough to fit everybody she met, he knew. There was no way someone was that good at fighting and that compassionate without being from a line of work that he had come halfway around the world to escape.

Still, the sight of her in her element did cause him to smile just a little bit. He was so engrossed in watching her that he almost didn't notice Leslie stalk up beside him.

Almost.

"She really takes to this kind of work," he observed, to which she nodded.

"Like a fish to water. The kids really love her too."

"She's running from something though, isn't she?"

Leslie gave him a sidelong glance, as if to question how he knew that. After a moment she figured it out.

"Takes a runaway to know one, doesn't it?"

He smiled.

"She's recovering," the doctor explained. "And this helps with that. That girl has seen some of the darkest shades of humanity, but she still wakes up smiling every morning."

"Not everybody has the same reaction."

"I'm sure. She really is something special, to be so resilient. And she spreads that optimism to others. That's why I'm confident that one day soon she won't need me to prop her up anymore."

He considered asking what Stephanie had gone through, but decided that if he had a right to know, the girl would tell him herself.

"Thanks for patching me up," he told her. "I should be going before nightfall, though."

She looked at him with understanding. "I suppose the associates of those men you killed will be after you now."

Thomas nodded. "They have been for a while. It would be irresponsible to put everyone here in danger."

"It's irresponsible to put _yourself_ in danger when your wounds are so fresh," she scolded. "If you really are going, I suggest lying low for a while. I've seen too many men with vendettas nearly get themselves killed."

"It's not a vendetta," he told her. "Just unfinished business."

"We'll be sad to see you go so soon," she replied. "But I thank you for not bringing that 'business' down on the rest of us."

He gave her a weary look. "I'm not the kind of person you thank."

Leslie chuckled. "We'll see about that."

* * *

Stephanie found him later on a dusty hill overlooking the village. He was staring off into the horizon, watching the sun climb slowly down the ladder at the edge of the world.

"Nickel for your thoughts?" she asked as she stood next to him. He raised an eyebrow.

"Why not a penny?"

"Inflation."

"Ah."

She turned her head to look at him. "But really, what's up?"

"They're coming," he said. "I know it."

Steph put a hand over her brow and gazed off into the distance. "You can see them?"

"No," he replied, shaking his head. "But they've found Reinhart's body by now and they'll be here in a few hours at most. We need to be gone by then."

"But we're not done administering the vaccine yet."

"Forget about it. If they raid the camp while we're here, it won't end pretty."

She shot him a look. "And if they raid it when we're not?"

He looked right back at her. "Not our problem."

Stephanie crossed her arms. "That's a load of crap. Those people need us."

"No they don't. You just have a hero complex."

"A _what_?"

"You heard me."

She glared at him. "What even gave you that impression?"

Blake sighed. "What were you doing right before I rescued you? What made you decide to fight off all those poachers by yourself?"

"They were threatening to sell me," she answered. "I was defending myself."

"No," he asserted, turning to face her. "You were playing hero."

"What makes you say that?"

"The way you moved," he replied. "You only went for incapacitating blows; nothing that would kill a man. There's only one type of of person who fights like that, and they have a real bad habit of playing hero."

"And who might that be?"

He looked her dead in the eye. "Bats."

She opened her mouth to protest, but he stopped her with a raised hand. "Don't bother. I know you trained with him. You were a teenage vigilante operating in Gotham, but something bad happened and you ended up here."

Stephanie let out a frustrated sigh. "How'd you guess?"

"I didn't," he said. "I figured it out. Wasn't hard. Your overpowering need to help everyone and everything was what gave you away, though."

She pouted. "You don't know me."

"I know enough."

"Okay, fine, you win!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "I did the vigilante thing in Gotham for a while. I was even Robin for all of five minutes. And you're right, something bad _did_ happen and Leslie helped me fake my death to get away from it. But since when is wanting to help people a bad thing?"

Blake rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. You think this place needs your help? The government here is more than capable of caring for some villagers."

"Yeah, except they aren't doing that."

"And do you know why? Because pretty little American tourists like yourself keep volunteering to do all their work for them."

Stephanie raised an eyebrow.

"And that's not all," he continued. "You know why the textile industry is tanking in most African nations? Clothing drives. A bunch of Americans donate their old rags to make themselves feel better and put factories here out of business because the charities undercut them. Same thing with food donations, house building, and all those other charities you hear society wives prattle on about while they try and spin the image that Africa is still some backwards continent that needs someone to help civilize it."

"Hey, at least I actually come here and get my hands dirty."

"Yeah, but like I said before, the government only puts up with it because it saves them the trouble. Same reason the cops put up with you when you put on a costume and started beating up street gangs."

"It was about more than that!" she insisted. "Why do you hate heroes so much anyway?"

He sighed and returned his gaze to the sunset. "Because I used to be a villain."

That stopped her rage cold. She blinked at him. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"And you're not anymore?"

"I wouldn't say I was much of one to begin with." He looked down at the camp. "I fought against the Bat a few times. Then Green Arrow. Then I almost got killed by Monsieur Mallah and The Brain, and finally relocated here to get my life back on track."

Stephanie drummed a finger against her chin as she tried to correlate that specific career path with the villains she knew. She concluded that he must have been before her time.

"What did you call yourself?"

He looked mildly embarrassed. "Catman."

"Catman? Really?" Now she remembered. She scanned his immaculately sculpted physique. "No offense, but didn't you used to be...?"

"Fatter?"

"I was gonna say dark-haired, but whatever floats your boat." She smiled disarmingly. "I guess living with lions keeps you fit, huh?"

He chuckled roughly.

"So what made you do it? Why do you have it in for us hero folk?"

"Because you all try to stick your nose in where it isn't wanted or needed," he answered, not looking at her. "Because the JLA are basically gods up in that orbiting base of theirs while the rest of us mortals have to try and live in their world. People put too much trust in them. What gives them the right?" He looked her in the eyes. "What gives _you_ the right?"

She crossed her arms and frowned sadly. "If I had an answer to that question then I wouldn't be here, would I?"

"The world functions well enough without us interfering," he continued. "We're better off leaving it alone."

Stephanie chuckled suddenly and shook her head. "You are so full of crap."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, it's funny, because if _you_ hadn't interfered when we first met, we wouldn't be having this discussion," she pointed out, grinning with satisfaction.

"I had business with Reinhart and his men anyway," he said defensively. "And just because I don't trust superheroes, that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore someone who gets put in my path. Heroes go looking for trouble. I help out if the situation warrants it. That's the difference between you and me."

"Whatever you say."

He let out an annoyed sigh.

"Look, let me at least warn them. We can all leave together."

"They'll only slow us down."

"I don't care," she replied. "If I'm leaving, it's not going to be without making sure those people don't just raid the camp anyway to get back at us."

"Fine," he said. "Do whatever you want. But I'm leaving tonight."

He started walking back to the camp when something caught his eye. "Actually, hold that thought."

* * *

"He's not far from here," Beecham declared, kneeling in front of the tire tracks and scanning the horizon. "See that camp down the hill? Smart money says he's there."

"I heard western relief workers set up a medical camp around this area," said Walsh, who stood to his right peering through a pair of binoculars. "If he was wounded this would be the most likely place for them to take him."

The Englishman nodded. "I agree. Radio back and tell them we've found the lion man. We sit here until backup arrives, then we take the camp."

"It's mostly villagers down there," Walsh replied. "And a lot of the relief workers are sponsored by the UN. This could bring a lot of heat down on us."

"We're only after one man. If they give him up nice and easy, along with a few crates of medicine that we can resell, this doesn't have to get messy. Now radio our location."

He complied, sending their coordinates back to the main group. Orders came back to hold their position until backup arrived.

"And now we wait," said Beecham.

"Waiting was never really my strong suit," came a voice from the darkness that none of them had heard before.

Before any of them had the chance to locate the speaker, a figure cloaked in shadow was already moving, camouflaged more by the second as the sun held its breath for the night.

Matthews was the first to fall, hitting the dirt about as softly as a meteor crash. Then down went Jameson, felled by a punch to the sternum and a chop to the throat that left him gasping. Erickson was fast enough to produce his machete, but too slow to keep the figure from grabbing his wrist, maneuvering behind him and stabbing him through the spine with his own weapon before kicking him off his feet.

In the space of seven seconds, five had become two, and those two were absolutely terrified. Walsh had produced his pistol and wrapped his finger around the trigger, but a second figure emerged from the darkness and wrenched it from his grip before roundhouse kicking him in the face. The second shadow coolly disassembled the weapon and discarded it in the dirt.

The two figures moved closer to him, and in the growing moonlight Marcus could just barely make out their faces. The first shadow was a man with primal fury behind his eyes, while the other was a young blonde woman with a more urban fire behind hers that made him briefly wonder what she was doing out here in the wilderness.

"You didn't have to threaten an entire camp full of innocent people just to get my attention, Marcus," the man said, his words made of cold steel. "Besides, an order like that doesn't really seem your style. I'm guessing it came from your boss."

"How do you know my name?"

"I know everything about you, Marcus," the man said. "I know your brother's the Highwayman, while you prefer a less ostentatious approach to international crime. I know you occupy a position on the list of top five trackers in the world, just a couple spots behind yours truly."

Beecham finally remembered where he'd seen the man's face before. "Thomas Blake? That really you?"

"In the flesh."

"And who's the strumpet?"

"Don't call her that," Blake warned. "And she's none of your business. Your beef is with me."

"Not my beef, really," he corrected. "This is just a job for me."

"Which is why I'm willing to let you go, as long as you pass on a message to your boss." He leaned in close. "Leave those villagers the hell out of this. You can chase me all over Africa to your heart's content, but only me. Touch anyone else and you all die slowly. Understood?"

"He's not going to take that very well," Beecham said matter-of-factly.

Blake smiled and handed him the radio. "I'm counting on it."

"Your funeral." He followed the man's instructions and radioed the message. "Now can we get this over with? I'd rather you kill me now than embarrass me by doing it in front of my boss. Wouldn't look professional."

"I don't plan on killing you at all," said Thomas. "If you're as good of a tracker as the rumor claims, that means your boss sunk a lot of money into you. He'll at least want to protect his investment. That makes you the perfect hostage."

"If he sees me in this position I think he'd rather just cut his losses, actually."

"Whatever." He turned to the young woman, who had not spoken a word. "You should leave. Go warn the people down below to evacuate."

"What about you?"

He smiled. "I'm staying right here. I think it's about time I stopped running from my problems."

The girl smiled faintly. "Guess you're taking my advice after all, huh?"

"I guess so. And you should take mine. Get everybody out of here. Their problem is with me and me alone."

She nodded, frowning slightly, but left all the same.

"Now, Marcus," he said, smirking. "Want to guess what else I know about you?"

* * *

Leslie had just finished securing the last of the medicine boxes when Stephanie came tearing in to the camp, making a beeline straight for the elderly doctor. The look in her eyes confirmed Leslie's worst suspicions about the fallout of rescuing Thomas.

"We gotta go," the blonde panted as soon as she reached her. "We need to get all these people out of here."

"Catch your breath," Leslie ordered calmly, then sighed. "So I'm guessing those men we ran into earlier weren't the whole group?"

Stephanie shook her head. "We just ran into another squad. They tracked us here. Thomas is keeping an eye on them so I could come down here and warn you. We have to get everyone out of here or they'll all be in danger."

She nodded. "I can take care of that. You should stay behind."

"Why would I do that?"

"So that you can cover our escape," Leslie explained patiently. "By now whoever's in charge of those men knows where we are and might already be on their way here. It's going to take several hours to move everything out of here, and it'll be impossible to hide the trail. You and Thomas are the only hope we have of fending them off."

"But I need to stay with you," she insisted. "I need to keep you all safe. I'm not just going to abandon you."

"You won't be. But honestly Stephanie, I know you're not afraid of them. What's holding you back?"

The girl appeared thoughtful for a few moments. Finally, she answered: "I guess I'm just not sure if I should start playing hero again."

She laughed. "Playing hero? You _are_ a hero. You have been for a long time."

"I know, but the nude wonder said some things that kinda made me question whether I should go picking fights that are over my head. I mean, that's what landed me in this position to begin with."

"Stephanie, you made a mistake. Everybody does that at least once in their life. But you've been working past it ever since you got here. You're ready to start being a hero again."

"How can you be sure?"

Leslie smiled warmly. "You know, I usually take medical residents on these trips with me to broaden their horizons, and do you want to know the hardest part? Shaking them out of the clinical mindset that medical school drilled into them. I have to teach them to see their patients as people."

The girl raised an eyebrow, as if to ask where she was going with this.

"I didn't have to teach you that. I watched you hand out vaccinations earlier, and your compassion for other people is simply astounding. You love to help people. It's who you are."

She fixed her with a steady gaze. "You didn't become a superhero because you wanted to imitate Batman and Robin. I don't even believe you really did it in reaction to your father's crimes. That might have been why you started, but do you know why you've stuck with it for so long? Because it's who you were meant to be, Stephanie. You shouldn't need me to tell you that."

Stephanie smiled. "Okay, I get it."

"If you want to help load the trucks, that's fine, but I need you to make sure those men are stopped, or they'll never stop chasing us. There comes a time when you have to stop running."

"I know. And thank you."

She chuckled. "Don't mention it, kiddo."

* * *

"Well, here they come."

They stood side by side, watching the convoy approach. There were five vehicles total, with three trucks and two SUVs. She could see men with rifles in each of the truck beds through the binoculars they had pilfered from the advance squad.

"Yep."

"Sure you don't wanna run?"

Blake nodded. "I just wanna make it clear," he said. "I'm not doing this to protect anybody. I'm doing it because I have a score to settle."

"And I'm doing it because I'm not ready to give up being a hero yet," she replied. "And because now I've got a score to settle with these punks too."

"Well, that's very heartwarming," said Marcus, who was on his knees in front of them. "But you do realize I mean precisely nothing to them as a hostage, right? They'll shoot all of us without a second thought."

"Then we'll see you in hell," Thomas responded without missing a beat.

By this time the convoy was nearly upon them. The headlights overtook their entire field of vision, and Stephanie had to shield her eyes from the glare. The vehicles came to a halt in front of them.

"Hello there, Marcus," a voice said, obscured by the lights to the point where neither of them could see his face. "I see you found him."

"Hey boss," Beecham replied. "Dreadfully sorry you have to see me like this. I tried to get him to just kill me like a gentleman, but this fool thinks you give enough of a damn about me to use me as a hostage."

"Well, he's not wrong, actually," the shadow said. "This hunting trip would be a waste if I lost my only tracker."

"I'm touched," said Marcus. "Still, this is awfully embarrassing."

"Don't worry about it." The man turned his attention to the other two people in front of him. "So who are they?"

"Well, the man holding the knife against my neck is Thomas Blake, the actual best tracker in the world. No idea who the girl is."

"And you never will," said Thomas. "That's awful rude, asking for our names without introducing yourself first."

The man laughed and stepped out in front of the lights, moving forward until they could just make out his face.

"Hey," said Stephanie. "I know that guy. He's Solomon Haines."

"Aka the Lion of Wall Street," said Thomas. "You made a killing by investing in construction companies just before the quake hit Gotham. There were rumors that you were also laundering money for a number of Gotham's prominent crime families, and after the gang war killed them all you disappeared along with 750 million dollars."

"Give or take a few million," he replied with a smirk. "You seem to know a lot for a guy who went missing a few months before that happened."

"I have my ways of getting information, even out here. The question is, what are you doing in Africa?"

"I live here now," Solomon answered. "It's great. Unregulated banks, easily bribed government, and an outstanding exchange rate. Nobody from the US can touch me here. Not even Batman or his people."

Stephanie chuckled. "I wouldn't be so sure of that."

"And what about you, young lady? I'm guessing like your friend here, you came to Africa to 'find yourself.' How's the search going?"

"Well, I've at least found someone I'd like to punch in the face."

He laughed, gesturing to the twenty or so armed men behind him. "Go ahead; see how far it gets you."

"Let me ask you something," she said, ignoring his threat. "If you've got more money than God out here, why the hell are your people poaching wildlife and stealing medicine?"

"You don't get rich by ignoring a money making opportunity," said Solomon. "And it's not the medicine I'm interested in so much as its availability. See, a lot of pharmaceutical companies have offices out here, and I have a large stake in their operation. A man in my position could stand to make a lot of money if those became the only options available."

"You're trying to create a shortage," she surmised. "And the poaching?"

"I call it hunting," he replied. "And that part's just for fun."

They both glared at him with murder in their eyes. Thomas was the only one who intended to follow through with it, however.

"You really are in no position to bargain," he told them. "I'd hate to lose Marcus, but if if gets you out of my way..."

Thomas chuckled.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing. It's just that you're not the only one who brought backup."

Before Solomon could ask what he meant, a man vanished from one of the truck beds. Then another. Then a third. "What in the hell...? Out of the trucks! Find whoever's doing this!"

The men turned on their flashlights and took off in multiple directions, searching the brush for whoever was hiding there. One man poked his rifle into a bush, only to be tackled to the ground seconds later, accompanied by a deafening roar.

"Lions!" one of the men shouted, raising his rifle and firing off a shot that barely missed the lioness who was busy ripping out the downed man's throat. More lions appeared from the brush, launching into a savage attack on the group.

Then all hell broke loose.

Lions possessed spectacular night vision, and had no need for the flashlights that the men swung around too clumsily to get a bead on the quickly moving predators. In addition, Stephanie had broken off to engage the men who weren't locked in a battle against the beasts, while Thomas headed straight for their leader with a knife in each hand.

Solomon had produced a machete and swung hard at Blake, who swerved around it easily and stabbed at his throat. Solomon ducked, leveling a punch at his chest. Thomas was sufficiently stunned by the blow, but still managed to avoid the machete as it swung down at him again.

Weaving around the butt of a rifle, Stephanie aimed a quick chop at the back of her attacker's neck, causing him to stumble forward. She hooked her foot around his ankle, and the forward momentum sent him crashing to the ground. She turned to face another opponent to her left, scooping up a stick from the ground and whacking it repeatedly into his abdomen before elbowing him in the back of the neck. A quick roundhouse to the sternum downed a third man, and she rushed towards the next group.

Thomas had managed to remove the machete from the equation with a well timed kick, but had lost one of his own knives in the process. Solomon produced a large Bowie knife in response, slashing it around like a madman. Blake fought smarter, dodging the savage swipes and letting the other man tire himself out.

Three men had surrounded Stephanie, who hopped back to avoid a punch, letting it strike the man beside her instead. Grabbing the first man's shoulders, she drove a knee hard into his chest, then rolled over his back when he doubled over. She continued building her momentum, angling a spinning kick at the next man's clavicle with the speed of a well-swung sword. He went down hard, and she turned her attention to the man who was still dazed from the misdirected punch. She twirled once, then extended her leg in a powerful side kick, knocking him to the dirt.

Meanwhile, the other men faced a massacre at the hands of the lions, who attacked with a coordination that the panicked men could not hope to match. This was not the behavior they had come to expect from the beasts, and indeed lions did not normally act in this way. But under their Pride leader's directions, they were brutal, efficient killers who had been trained for just such an occasion.

And somewhere in all the confusion, Marcus Beecham had disappeared.

Batting his opponent's knife aside, Thomas punched Solomon in the face to stun him before launching a quick side kick to put some distance between them. Another man tried to rush him, but received a knife in the eye as his only response. Removing the blade from its bloody new sheath, he waved it around ominously and the two men began to circle one another.

At the same time, Stephanie was doing her best to avoid poorly aimed shots from a .38 revolver that hit nothing but air. With the way the man's hands were trembling, she did not have to try very hard. A moment later, a lion tackled the man to the ground, removing the problem.

None of the lions were going after her, Stephanie realized. In much the same way that a guard dog didn't attack people that their master was familiar with, these lions seemed to follow Thomas' directions without a word. She'd have thought it was superpowers if she didn't know for a fact that he had none. Still, she wasn't about to question it.

Solomon made the first move this time, charging a Thomas in a frustrated rage. Blake easily sidestepped the attack, slicing open the other man's hunting vest. He ducked under the follow up attack, a horizontal swipe that followed a 180 degree arc, before countering with a well aimed uppercut.

As Haines stumbled back, Thomas admitted to himself that he was a remarkable knife fighter. It just so happened that he was better.

"You're not that different from me, you know," Haines taunted. "We all came to Africa to get away from something. I know you got your ass handed to you by Green Arrow. I heard a rumor that you were gorilla shit, and yet here you are. You're not here because you actually give a damn about the people in that camp. So why the hell do you insist on making my life so difficult?"

"Because," said Blake, casually twirling his knife. "You killed part of my Pride. And now we're going to kill you."

"I'd like to see you try."

Thomas rushed forward, nearly blind in his anger. His tunnel vision was such that when he raised his knife to counter a swing from his opponent's blade, he completely missed where his other hand was going.

A fist slammed into his bandage, and he could feel the stitches tear open and the blood rush from the wound once more. Haines followed this up with a swing from his knife, but Thomas managed to bat it aside with enough force to send both of their weapons flying into the night. Solomon did not even slow down, punching his cheek with another fist before striking the open wound several more times in succession, until Thomas felt he was about to pass out from the pain.

The onslaught only halted when Stephanie sailed over his head with a flying kick that he barely avoided. She wasted no time swinging around with her fist as she turned, which he blocked by making an X with his forearms. He countered with a straight punch, which she dodged with a butterfly kick.

Thomas tried to stand, but his wound made that all but impossible. He pressed hard against it, trying to avoid bleeding out. Stephanie was doing a remarkable job against the larger man, weaving through his defenses to strike at his weak points. The more she hit him, the more frustrated he got, and the more predictable his blows became.

Launching a rapid flurry of punches to his chest, Stephanie ducked under the clearly telegraphed haymaker and struck at his chin. Solomon wobbled backwards, and she launched another punch at his sternum. He recovered in time to catch her arm, then grabbed her other wrist and held her up in the air, where he prepared to headbutt her into submission.

Growling, she put every ounce of strength she had into the cheapest shot she knew, planting her foot squarely between his legs like she was kicking a field goal.

Solomon howled and released her, doubling over from the pain. She brought her elbow down in the middle of his back, sending him to the ground, where he stayed, clutching his crotch.

By this time the lions had dealt with the other men and surrounded the group. Stephanie rushed to Thomas's side with worry in her eyes.

"Shit, your stitches are open," she said, panting heavily. "We need to catch up to Leslie soon."

"I know," he told her. "But not before we wrap this up."

Leaning against her as she helped him stand, Thomas glared hard at Solomon, who had recovered from the groin kick but remained on the ground.

"Is this the part where you have your lions eat me?" He seemed almost bored by the prospect.

Blake shook his head. "I wouldn't want to upset their stomachs. But don't think you're getting out of here alive."

"Wait," said Stephanie. "Couldn't we just hand him over to the park rangers? He's been poaching like crazy out here. They'll put him away for a long time."

"You heard him," he said. "He's got the entire government in this region bought and paid for. This guy won't face justice no matter where he goes."

"I still don't see why that means killing him in cold blood."

"I didn't see you complaining when all of those men were killed," he rebutted, gesturing around them.

"Look, I'm not Batman," she told him. "I can understand taking a life to protect yourself or somebody else. But we were able to subdue this guy. He should answer for what he's done."

"He will," said Thomas. "Besides, I'm not the one who's going to kill him."

"He's right about that, luv."

They turned to face Marcus, who had emerged from behind one of the trucks carrying a pistol.

"What the hell is this?"

"How did you put it, Solomon? You don't get rich by ignoring an opportunity? I'd say that's precisely what we have here."

"What are you talking about?"

"See, the Americans weren't the only ones you pissed off by disappearing with three quarters of a billion dollars. The organization I represent had a substantial stake in your investment firm as well."

"And what organization is that?"

Beecham smirked. "Her Majesty's Secret Service."

"You're a fucking secret agent?! How the hell did that not show up on the background check?"

"Deep cover, mate. Thomas here actually did his research, though. Really impressive stuff. So he offered me a deal: I let him vanish into the night, and he presents me with the opportunity to bring you in."

Solomon chuckled. "Thought you were gonna kill me."

"I still might," he replied. "But right now we have more interest in getting back that money you stole. So come on, then. On your feet."

"Looks like you live to fight another day, Blake," he said. "Or not."

Right on cue, Thomas blacked out.

* * *

It was several days later when he finally awoke. Stephanie was waiting at his bedside, just like before.

"Hey," she said softly. "Look who's finally back with us."

He chuckled. "Where's Haines?"

"On his way to an MI6 interrogation facility, I imagine," she said. "I gotta say, I really didn't see that coming."

"You weren't supposed to," he admitted. "I made that deal with Beecham while you were warning people to evacuate."

"So why were you talking like you were gonna kill Haines?"

"That," he explained, "was actually for you. I wanted to test how much of a hero you actually were."

"And?"

"And it confirmed exactly what I thought. When it comes down to it, you still value human life. Just not to the point of impracticality."

"Well, I'm just glad everything worked out."

He smiled faintly. "So are you heading back to Gotham now?"

"Actually, I'm going to stay in Africa a while longer," she said. "I promised Leslie I'd help her on this trip and it's time I started keeping my promises. And besides, things still haven't cooled down enough back home for me to return yet."

"Well if you ever need anything, don't be afraid to look me up. After this I think I owe you one. I'd never have been able to bring them down without you."

"I might take you up on that someday." She stood up. "There is just one more thing I've gotta bring up, though."

"And what's that?"

"I know you didn't just stay because you had a score to settle. You were ready to leave right up until the moment you heard Marcus give the order to take everyone in the camp hostage. I know he was your ace in the hole, but you still had twenty armed men to deal with, and even with those lions on your side, I really don't see you as a guy who takes that kind of risk just to get revenge."

"What are you saying?"

"Oh, just that it was rather... _heroic_ of you to do what you did," she said, her face aglow with mischief.

"I was not playing hero," he insisted, though even he didn't fully believe that.

"Sure you weren't."

He glared at her for a few moments, but eventually cracked the slightest of smiles, which only made her grin wider.

She started to move out of the tent. "Now get some rest. I'll see you in the morning."

He nodded, and closed his eyes again.

Thomas Blake had never been a hero, and likely never would be, no matter what Stephanie claimed. But maybe there was a place for heroes in the world. At the very least, Stephanie deserved to have something in life that drove her, even if it was a goal that could never be reached.

As for him, he still needed to find something to fight for. But for now, a peaceful life with his lions was good enough for him.

* * *

"Wakey wakey, Haines."

Solomon Haines shivered as the cold water struck his face, and quickly came to terms with the fact that he was strapped to a chair. The room was dark, and the décor was decidedly old-fashioned. Arab, to be sure. The stonework was incredibly intricate, and the overall motif suggested something foreboding.

A blindfold was pulled from his eyes, and it took a few seconds of blinking for him to adjust. "Where the hell am I?"

"Somewhere you won't be able to buy your way out of," said Marcus. "It's time you learn the true reason I spared you."

He glared. "Do tell."

"You pissed off a lot of people when you took that money, Solomon. My organization depended on that money to fund several of our operations. Imagine our surprise when it suddenly dried up."

"Ain't that what taxpayers are for?"

"Oh, MI6 is just my day job," Beecham corrected. "The organization I truly represent has a much grander vision for the world."

"So, what? You infiltrated my crew and waited for an opportunity to take me down? Why not just kill me?"

"Killing you won't get us the money," said a voice from the darkness. Female, this time. "It is the only reason you still breathe."

"And who the hell are you?"

The woman stepped forward, and he could see something ancient and terrible in her eyes. His heart skipped a beat.

"My name is Talia Al Ghul," she answered. "And I have a few questions for you."

**Author's Note:**

> Hi again!
> 
> This is the beginning of the first "episode" of what I imagine as what could be a prospective season of an animated series, if said series had no time limits or censors. I'm pretty much stalled on it at this point, but I'll be posting what I have so far.
> 
> Let me know what you think!


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